Category: breathing

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Yoga and minimalism

When I think of yoga imagery, minimalism the last thing that comes to mind. The Hindu aesthetic is quite clearly maximalist, full of colour, symbolism and detail. This spills over into Western yoga. Yoga leggings, to choose an obvious example, are often brightly coloured and patterned. Many yogis adorn their studio spaces with multi-hued batiks. This is super good, a few years ago I would have done the same. I really like colour. But, there has been an evolution in my consciousness and my yoga teaching and practice. I call it Y O G A | M I N I M A L I S M.

Am I minimalist in my home life?

Yes and no. It has been the work of my lifetime to overcome my hoarding habit. Not only am I born in the Year of the Rat (Rats are considered to be innate hoarders), but both my parents had a marked tendency to save everything for a rainy day. Add to this an exaggerated sense of responsibility for The World (I thought that if I *didn’t* recycle or dispose of ethically I would doom us all!) and some pretty tight years, economically, and you get a person who holds onto to stuff. A big part of my personal (r)evolution was learning to part with things – EVEN if I like them, EVEN if they’re useful.

It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it and now I can confidently say that my possessions do not overwhelm me and are manageable and useful. I had to do the same thing with my yoga. Beginning in 1999, I have practiced yogâsana, and was lucky to find Viniyoga in 2007. Since then, I have worked on focus and exclusivity, and it has brought such an enormous sense of peace and joy – as well as more minimalism. I just do this one thing – Viniyoga and mantra. (My thesis for my first YTT was on mantra and it is core element of my practice). Even so, I do always try to deepen certain poses (the progressive development over time is called “Vinyasa Krama”), and there are still moves that I would love to master. But, that is only desire and I can choose to act on it, or not. For now, I choose to gentle and calm postures, no straining, lots of rest. It works for me and I think that it can work for most practitioners with more than a decades’ practice on their mats.

Y O G A | C O N F U S I O N

Yoga is a bit of a hoarder. It has a lot of facets. You start with postures and suddenly find pranayama. You start with mantra and suddenly find yantra and suddenly you think “I am going to print some t-shirts”. Modern yoga is definitely NOT minimalist. Yoga is full to bursting with ideas, scriptures, imagery, history and options to personalise your practice. It is far too easy to be drawn into ever wider and more disperse circles of yoga.

For example, you begin by studying a 200-hr Sivananda YTT, and after a few months’ teaching, you understand that you need more depth. So you go on a 500-hr Yoga Therapy YTT. This helps, but by going to a different lineage, you find that the same posture is known by different names, depending on whom you study with. You start to investigate and find out that Kundalini yoga doesn’t even use Sanskrit, it uses Gurmukhi. You listen to the Kundalini bhajans and discover that you like chanting. Suddenly you have a white turban and a spiritual name. You get into White Tantra but find the scene a bit way-out. You pull away and suddenly you’re doing Beer Yoga…

Sounds funny, right? But it is not that far-fetched. It is modern yoga and it can pull you in all directions, if you’re not careful. Being pulled in all directions is the OPPOSITE of yoga, which, of course, means “to unite”. Yoga is about becoming united in body and mind, united in your path and your purpose and united in your heart and spirit.

Y O G A | M I N I M A L I S M

Minimalism, as applied to yoga, means sticking to one path, and using fewer and fewer props and postures. Yoga, union, is, after all, found in meditation. Meditation does not use anything at all. I have said many a time that meditation is profoundly counter-cultural as the one who meditates consumes nothing at all, hardly even air.

The more I practice and teach, the less I do. And I mean that in the gross, outerworld way. Of course, I try to stay “in yoga” all the time, even when I am out dancing or whatever. But I don’t feel the need to make challenging yoga shapes, post every day to Instagram whilst wearing cool yoga gear or even convince people of the many incredible benefits of yoga. In fact, I have become very minimalist in my approach to yoga.

My list:

  1. If someone hears the call to do yoga, they will. If not, don’t try to convince them.
  2. If a practice accelerates the breath, it may be good and fun, but it goes against yoga. They say you’re born with a certain number of breaths and using them up faster shortens your life. Move and breathe S L O W L Y.
  3. If you can stop, do. If you can just sit and breathe, do it.
  4. Focus on the exhale, not the inhale.
  5. Remember the Yamas ahimsa and santosha. Ahimsa is “no harming”. Don’t hurt yourself. Santosha is “enjoyment”. Make your practice fun and enjoyable.
  6. Gratitude. What a gift is it to practice yoga, to live in a time and a place in which yoga has travelled across the globe and embraced us all. Thank you, Purusha.

To close and honour the ending principle

Hindu philosophy, as applied to yoga, identifies Lord Shiva as the closer of things, the one who lets things end. As I finish this post, I offer my words to this principle. Ending, emptiness, the void – these are all quite frightening to the Western Mind. We see endings as finite, but if you see Life itself as a continuum, as energy gathering, unfolding and dispersing, then endings aren’t so scary. Minimalism in yoga is allowing your âsana practice to draw inwards, to become tighter and smaller and, well, more minimal. Don’t be afraid of letting a sweaty or active practice fade as you age. It may be just what you need. After all, if we don’t open space for the new, how can anything new enter our life?

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Yoga Breathing Classes 101

Yogic Breathing is Healthy Breathing

Rachel Rose meditating and practising yoga breathing
Meditation and breathing

I have spent much of the past two years teaching people to breathe. I still teach postures, but pranayama mostly fills my days, now. Sadly, I gave up teaching group yoga classes during, and then after, the pandemic. It was a super hard time. I am glad that all the videos I streamed via my Facebook Page, Alteayoga with Rachel Rose, are still online. They are a poignant reminder of the dark days of the first confinement.

The SHA keeps me super busy, as do my massages.

At time of writing, I am offering Yoga Breathing Classes here in Altea. Please contact me if you would like to know more. Breath is life!

How we Breathe

Don’t forget that I began writing about the mechanics and fine tuning of breathing here in this blog. I called it “How We Breathe“. You might find something interesting there. Go have a look!

Breathe.

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Even yogis have down days

Today was just one of those days. Feeling narky, out of sorts, with too many troubling thoughts running around my head. I wasn’t in dire straits, just a little off-colour. It happens to all of us, even yogis.

A mindful day

Difference is, we yogis have tools to work with when things seems askew. Mindfulness, deep breathing and conscious relaxation all help to keep intrusive thoughts away. Honestly, on the tough days, there may be a true mishap, but as often as not, you’re feeling bad because of your thoughts. The Buddha talked about the two darts: the first dart is the real situation, what actually happened to cause the hurt. The second dart is what we think about what happened. Often, the first dart is sharp and painful, but short-lived, while the second dart burrows in like a burr beneath a saddle.

On the blah days, it is usually our own thoughts that asail us. So, we observe, then calm them.

Today was my day off. I am not the only person, I know, who feels more stable on work days. Personal life is much more unpredictable and informal than work life, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming.

The weight of household chores and paperwork, then some attempts at a social life or creative release, can leave us feeling a little dispirited and pressed for time at home.

My strategy has always been a “one foot in front of the other” approach. I look at the mess and just start with one small thing. I keep myself focused on the task I have chosen, knowing that it is better to finish one or two small tasks than start a dozen and leave them all unfinished. It has been shown that mess and clutter contribute to feelings of anxiety, so I try not to leave things unfinished. Just get going.

Today, I did some DIY. I am not gifted at DIY, but today I worked slowly and methodically. I did my little tasks well enough. I found the tidying up afterwards particularly tedious, but I plodded through it, realising by this point that some of my narkiness was probably due to hunger.

I washed the dishes while cooking some rice, and sung mantras. Om Tare Ture Tuttare Swaha was the mantra of the day, but I just sing whatever occurs to me. I sang it in my own style, but the version in the link is a cool one. I felt much better by the time the food was ready, so eating it was a pleasure. I sat quietly, doing nothing other than eating mindfully. I chewed and savoured every bite, breathed only through my nose, and paid close attention to every detail. It was heavenly. By the time I got to lie down for a little siesta, it was nearly 17:00. I had a meeting at 18:15, but set my mind to relaxing. It can be hard to relax when you know you have to get going again soon, so I just counted my breath, letting the exhale be longer than the inhale, and relaxed my muscles. I drifted into some state of (un)consciousness. Whether it was sleep or just deep relaxation, I rose feeling much refreshed.

And now it’s evening and I took some time to do a drawing for this post. Drawing mindfully is another wonderful relaxation technique.

As for the million thoughts in my head: they are still there, and the big decision I am turning over still needs to be made. And Mercury is still retrograde, so who knows what will transpire. But, I feel better, happier, lighter and in control of my emotions. And that is what it’s all about.

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How We Breathe: Moving things around

Introduction

We usually just think of the breath as being Oxygen in and CO2 out…if we think about the breath at all.  Yoga practitioners may think about prâna.  But few of us take the time to contemplate all the other things that move around because of the breath.

Most of us know a little about the blood.  We have all had a cut at one time of another, and we have all seen a butcher’s shop in our lives.

Most of us, however, know very little about the lymph, the interstitial fluid or the cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF).

While the blood is moved around the body by the heart, the other fluids don’t have such luck. The lymph is primarily moved by muscle flexion and breathing.  The cerebro-spinal fluid is mainly moved by the breath and pressure differences due to blood flow and heartbeat. Interstitial fluid is drained by the lymphatic system which, as already mentioned, is moved by the breath.  Are you beginning to see a pattern?

Lymphatic flow and the breath

The lymphatic system is an amazing semi-closed network of vessels and nodes that runs throughout the entire body.  Its anatomy is not yet fully understood.

Lymph is a somewhat thick liquid that carries junk from the cells back to the central circulation so that your body can dispose of it.  Lymph is not made by the body in the same way that blood or bone is made.  Lymph is a by-product of normal metabolism.  There are times when you make more lymph – ie:  a healing wound that is inflamed will produce more waste, which then becomes lymph.  There is a baseline lymph level called the lymph obligatory load.  When you have more lymph being produced, the lymph obligatory load increases.  Are you with me so far?

Lymph is created when the junk and water that is hanging around the cells in the interstitium gets swept up into the lymph pre-collector channels.  Once there, it is called lymph although, really, it hasn’t changed. It’s just that, now, it’s in the lymphatic system and gets called lymph. For the sake of simplicity, we shall lump lymph and interstitial fluid together.  So far, so good.

The lymph vessels get bigger and bigger as they get closer to the centre of the body.  At some stage, they become able to make little pulsations which push the lymph onwards. Backflow is impeded by valves that are similar to the valves in the veins.  These are called “bicuspid valves” and are one-way.  Side note:  varicose veins are caused, often, by malfunction of the biscuspid valves.

Still, the best way to pump lymph from out to in (distal to medial) is by moving muscles and by breathing.  The movement of the diaphragm down and up creates a relative vacuum with each breath.  This pressure difference acts like a piston-like pump, and sucks the lymph into the central lymph ducts.  To return to general circulation, the lymph accumulates in the “Cisterna Chyli” before moving into the thoracic duct. The Thoracic duct is the biggest lymph vessel in the body.  It crosses the diaphragm at the lowest and back-most of the holes in the diaphragm. It empties the lymph into the subclavian vein, just below the collarbone.  Once there, the liquid is no longer lymph.  It is now part of the blood.

So…lymph is created in the cells by normal metabolism.  It needs to get “home”.  It moves because of the breath.  If we breathe badly, lymph flow is slow and we may develop edema, which is swollen tissue, full of water.  So, breathe well and love your lymph.  On we go…

CSF Flow and the breath

“Breathing acts as a pump to propel CSF up the spine and around the brain.”

“With each breath the diaphragm descends and the rib cage expands, leading to a drop in pressure in the chest cavity. This drop in pressure draws blood from the brain in veins that empty into the heart. The skull is a rigid and confined space. As blood returns to the heart, CSF is drawn up the spinal column to replace the lost volume.”

source:  (https://goiheart.com/blog/brain-breathing-to-improve-internal-health)

This is very similar to the way the breath affects the lymph. Now, take a moment to contemplate this:  the Central Nervous System (CNS) is the brain and spinal column, put as simply as possible.  Most of you have heard about discs (ie:  “slipped disc” or “herniated disc”) and the meninges (ie:  “meningitis).  Well, the discs are like hard little sponges between the spine bones and the meninges are like cling-film coatings around the brain and spinal column. The meninges carry the Cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF).

Discs don’t have blood supply.  (“During development and at birth, vertebral discs have some vascular supply to the cartilage endplates and the anulus fibrosus. These quickly deteriorate leaving almost no direct blood supply in healthy adults.“)  It seems that there is some blood supply to the edges of the discs via capillaries, the smallest of the blood vessels, and that nutrients are diffused into the centre of the discs, but very slowly.  So, to nourish the intervertebral discs is quite a challenge.

Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) is produced in the choroid plexus of the brain and then moves along slowly with each hearbeat, circulating through the ventricles of the brain and then throughout the subarachnoid space of the spinal cord and brain. Bathing and nourishing the nervous system, CSF also cushions the brain and spinal cord.

source:  https://www.conquerchiari.org/articles/special-topics/daily-living/nuts-and-bolts-of-spinal-anatomy.html

They are, instead, nourished by the CSF in the meninges.  We write “meninges” with an “s” because it’s plural:  there are three.  One is just around the brain, but two of them go all the way down the spine to the lower back.  And yes, they nourish and protect the bones, discs and nerves of the spinal column because they transport CSF.  So, it’s a nice thing to have that CSF moving, isn’t it?

If you are well hydrated, you should be able to influence the movement of CSF via breathing and movement.  Logically, when one is lying down, the CSF pressure is about the same all the way along the spinal column.  This is also the case for lymphatic flow:  it is greatly improved by simply lying down.  I am often asked to contrast yoga with Tai Chi or Qi Gong.  While no expert on either practice, and with a healthy respect for both, I always give the same answer:  I like yoga because of the floor work, specifically that part where you lie down and breathe deeply.

Viniyoga, the breath, and moving fluids

Yoga is a practice that is based upon linking the breath with movement.  In Viniyoga, we usually open the body on the Inhale and close on the Exhale.  We use some breath retentions (krama) for added effect.  We teach breathing in postures and in isolation (pranayama).  In addition to promoting flexibility in joints and muscles, yoga lengthens and deepens the breath.  Over time, the resting breathing pattern of the practitioner changes permanently.  Because Viniyoga focuses so much on the breath, it is a deeply healing form of hatha yoga.  It is also accessible to all.  A person may not be able to dominate a complex flow sequence, but they can probably work comfortably with Viniyoga’s more gentle but just as effective sequences.

Conclusion

Breathing is more than just gas exchange.  Breathing is a motor, a pump, and it moves fluids around the body.  Specifically, lymphatic fluid, interstitial fluid and cerebro-spinal fluid are moved by the pressure gradients created by deep diaphragmatic breathing.  Yoga is a practice that teaches people how to breathe, and through the correct use of postures and sequences, we can positively influence the practitioner’s health.

Further Reading:

“Why Yoga Works”  http://www.healtouch.com/csft/yoga.html

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Teaching yoga from the heart

Every day I wake up thinking about yoga.  It has been like this for as long as I can remember.  It is my deepest passion, my guiding light, the shining star in my sky.  1313146901-300px
Yoga teachers are bound to one fundamental rule:  you can only teach what you know.  And knowing yoga is about doing yoga.  You cannot teach postures that you cannot do yourself.  You cannot create the discipline necessary to establish a home practice, even if that home practice is as humble as getting on your mat once a week, unless you yourself have a home practice.  And you cannot impart the power of yoga to ease suffering and pain if you do not use yoga yourself to ease  your own suffering.
An example:  I got really sick over Christmas.  And I was alone.  After days of coughing, breathlessness, helplessness, I found myself in a state of terrible anxiety.  I am going to die, I thought.  We are all going to die, I thought.  Death, sadly, has a 100% success rate.  it is the most elemental, primordial fear that we humans have, and it is a rational fear.  Because it is scary to think that our days are numbered, that all that we know will pass, that all the people we love will walk off this mortal coil one day and the worst thing is, we know not when.
womanchildstar-300pxI have a particularly intense relationship with all this because of the cancer rehab work I did.  I watched people I loved, my patients, die year after year.  I avoided the funerals because I had to maintain some sort of professional distance.  In the last year I worked in breast cancer rehab, I had four women lie on my table weeping, and all of them were younger than me.  How can you process that?  How can you deal with the fact that illness is real, that all the yoga and chanting in the world will not heal a tumour, and that even the doctors are helpless in the face of this.  How?  how do you deal with that?
Well, first you freak out, if you’re me.  Yep, it lay on me like a shroud and I carried that mantle for years. I tried, I tried my very best.  But then it got too much and I ran.  I rejected the world of oncology, I didn’t want to know.  And then I got real.  I realised that I possessed the skills to ease this particular suffering, this terrible elemental pain that we all share.  I have yoga.  My mission in life is to teach the yoga I know to ease the suffering of our human condition.  There, mission statement. I don’t know if I ever had one before!
Yoga will not change the fact that we are mortal.  Yoga will not make you live forever.  But yoga can make you still in the face of all that fear, all that sadness, all that fragility.  Yoga can teach you to sit still and say “Yes, okay, it is like this.”  And dear, dear people, that stillness is so necessary to this world.  One day you will be called upon to be still in the face of a storm and if you know how to breathe, to chant a little prayer, to ask the Universe for guidance when you yourself don’t know what to say, when words fail you, when your heart wants to burst, you lie in the hands of your maker, this incomprehensible, beautiful, contradictory, frustrating world that we live in and you say “I don’t know, please help me”, then you have the power of yoga.
And if all this is getting heavy, but you’ve stuck with me until now, thanks for listening.  And let me tell you this – yoga is about joy.  Yoga is about the joy you find when you understand and accept the reality that is ours, and you say – HEY !  But I am ALIVE!  And I have love inside me!  I have so much love to give and there is always somewhere to put my love!  And then you smile, and you laugh and you are present and available and, and, and….you feel HAPPY!  So dear readers, this is what I did when I was sick.  I sat and I chanted and breathed until I remembered that this life is the one I have, and it is marvellous, beautiful, miraculous, just as your life is marvellous, beautiful and miraculous.  
Now get out there and have a great Friday!  Live, love, laugh.  I will be teaching in less than an hour, and I will probably hug all my students afterwards.  Cos I am like that.

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Get on your mat! Yoga to ease the symptoms of menopause

I came across this article about the benefits of yoga for peri-menopausal and post-menopausal women.  I just had to share!
The study was done by researchers in Germany,  and examined groups of women in the USA, India, Brazil, China, South Korea and Germany.  What is really interesting about the breadth of the study groups is that the women would have had vastly different lifestyle and diet habits.  So, the observed positive effect must come from something outside of existing diet and lifestyle.  In this case, the researchers conclude that yoga helps specifically with night sweats and hot flashes.
I worked for twelve years in rehabilitation of women who have had breast cancer.  As you may know, many breast cancers are sensitive to oestrogen, so one of the therapeutic strategies is to provoke a chemical menopause.  This may sound harsh, and it is, for the ladies.  Later, the woman may take a hormone disruptor (aromatase inhibitor or similar) like Tamoxifen for a period of five to ten years.  So, I have seen my share of ladies going through the menopause, believe me. The hot flashes and night sweats are very disruptive.
I myself have been crossing this particular juncture in the past two years and the night sweats thing comes and goes.  But, as a practising yogi, I will say that my transition has been smooth, and I am not overly bothered by the symptoms.  If anything, I feel lighter in my body and more stable in my mind.  I did not expect to have a relatively early menopause (I am only 45), but I did expect that my symptoms should be bearable.  And in fact, yes, they are.
It is worth noting that the positive effect of yoga might also lie in the way the women perceive the symptoms.  It is now known that the intensity of pain or physical discomfort is partly an issue of perception.  “A study from the University of Colorado at Boulder released on Jan. 12, 2015, reports that the ability to use your thoughts to modulate perceptions of pain utilizes a completely separate brain pathway than the pathway used to send the physical pain signal to your brain. This discovery is a breakthrough”
So, let’s just sum up, shall we?  Yoga seems to be effective at easing symptoms of menopause, even adjusting for diet and lifestyle difference.  Yoga is a safe and practical solution.  Viniyoga, which adapts the practice to the individual, not the individual to the practice, is a style that can help women who might have co-pathologies like osteoporosis/osteopenia, overweight/obesity, arthritis, and so on.
Have I convinced you yet?  Don’t worry, I will keep trying if not.  Why?  Because I care about your health, even if I don’t know you (yet).
Love, Rachel

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On yoga and loneliness (the scourge of our times)

In this morning’s post, I mentioned one of the benefits of yoga is the relief of loneliness.  This is not often mentioned when people talk about yoga.  Mostly, yoga is said to relieve back pain, insomnia, sluggish digestion and various other physical ailments.  Those of us who practice yoga with any degree of seriousness know that the psychological and emotional benefits of a sustained yoga practice outweigh the physical gains.
You see, as this article points out, loneliness can be as dangerous to a person’s health as bad habits like late nights and too many fags.    And yoga, when done in a group setting, ie:  a class, helps relieve loneliness.

two hands
hands

Loneliness is the the illusion of separateness, of separation, and is a trick of the ego.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that the ego sets out to convince us that we are disconnected from one another.  In the simplest sense, our ego sets us apart from other by comparing and judging.  “I am more intelligent/worldly/attractive… than so-and-so.”  Or, we think that others are ignorant, “so-and-so has no common sense, can’t they see that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, these people are all sheep”.   Those sorts of thoughts are so incredibly common that we often don’t even realise that we are having them.  But, their effect is devastating.  If left too long, we can end up truly isolated.  I have lost count of the number of students who at some point in their 50’s realised that their old friends have fallen away and new friends are increasingly hard to find.  Uh-oh and a big ouch if that happens to you.
What to do?  Tame the ego is the obvious thing.  It is not easily done, but the cool thing about yoga is that it sets out a tried and tested path for taming the ego.  The first step is defining the ego, knowing it is there but that the ego is not YOU.  Then, once you know what to watch out for, you start to watch its tricks.  You get used to that stupid, petty little judgemental voice steering you wrong and, eventually, you stop listening to it.  Then, in the stillness, you get more and more used to listening to the quiet-voiced corrections of the heart.
Yep, sounds a bit esoteric, I know.  But it goes something like this:  the ego says “look at the stuck-up prick holding court at the bar again.  My goodness, what a loser.  And all those people listening to him…I have nothing in common with these idiots.”  But, when you know that it is the nasty little voice of the ego slamming around in your head, you just say “shut up”.  And, in the silence you hear another voice saying “look at that fragile person in need of attention.  And all those fairweather friends listening in for want of anything better to do, like real communication, or even blessed silence.   Their suffering is my suffering.  Let all creatures live happily.”  That, my friends, is the heart talking.
Yoga teaches you to turn everyday situations around so that we can see the beauty, fragility, and love that is all around, all the time.  THAT is what yoga does.  And the group class is fun-da-mental for this process.  In the group class, we fall out of postures.  We suck at the forward bends.  We fart (well, not me personally, but you get it, right?).  In the group class our cracked heels are exposed and sometimes we turn up late.  And sometimes we cry.  And sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we spontaneously hug.  All this happens in yoga because we still the fluctuations of the mind (Yoga citta vritti nirodhah) and insodoing discover that we are all a lot more alike than we originally thought.  Out the door with the illusion of separateness, all hail connection.
So, come on and do some yoga with me, with us.  With anyone, because honestly, although I try to earn a living at this, if you take away from this post the desire to try yoga and you go with another teacher, or a YouTube video (but with a friend, natch!) then I am totally cool with that.  You can let me know if I have inspired you, even a little bit, by leaving a comment.  Because you know what?  Even I am prone to the lonelies, even I need to feel the love.  There, I said it.
 
 
I shared a quote from Mike Lousada the other day, and it resonates here too:
“Love is the deep truth of being. Anything else is an ego story designed to keep us feeling separate and alone.  Surrender to that deeper field of Love and Life will open to you”

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New Year, new you

Good morning dear yogis, or yogis-to-be!

prismatic lotus flower
lotus flower

Wouldn’t you like to make 2018 the year that you take up yoga?  Yoga is so ubiquitous now, it seems almost silly not to at least try?
But why should yoga be everywhere, and now?  Because it complements any other form of physical education or sport, but can also stand alone.  Yoga can be used by anyone engaged in demanding sport like football, running , CrossFit, to help rehabilitate muscle and connective tissue, improve breathing technique and oxygenation, and generally settle you down after a hard workout.
Yoga is completely adaptable for all ages and fitness levels.  Especially Viniyoga, the style of yoga that I teach.  The central tenet of this style is that the yoga adapts to the person, not the person to the yoga.  This means that viniyoga sequences are modifiable, which is not the case in many yoga styles.  As we know, the European population is ageing, and ageing brings with it certain changes such as connective tissue stiffness in post-menopausal women, overweight and obesity, problems with bone density, heart disease, sleep problems and a host of other concerns.  While yoga is not a magic pill, it certainly helps practitioners to feel better in their bodies, to sleep better, to accept more gracefully the changes associated with ageing, and to overcome loneliness.
Yes, what I say about loneliness is very important.  Yoga is fundamentally a solitary practice, a journey within.  But, in the West, the social aspect of yoga, the group work, is tremendously important.  If you join a yoga class, you will find like-minded people, and that sense of separation might be temporarily eased.  Loneliness is a big problem in Europe.  Yoga, quite apart from all the other physical benefits, can help overcome this pervasive sense of aloneness.
So, please come along to class and see what it’s all about.  You will be welcomed with open arms and a big smile.
Peace, namasté, Rachel

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New Term starts 12-Sept-2017

Yoga at GOA
Yoga at GOA

Hey people, sorry it’s been a while.  The summer term has gone swimmingly and I’ve been kept busyingly busy!.  Classes were sometimes full to overflowing, sometimes empty to the point of silence.  But, the 90-days of consecutive classes is drawing to an end. And, of course, I have got my fingers in the pot, planning for next term.
Firstly, I am going to take a few days off teaching.  Last class is this Friday, 1-Sept-2017.  Then, until Tuesday 12-Sept-2017, rien de rien.
From 12-Sept-2017, I will offer a five-days-per-week teaching schedule. No class Sunday or Monday, but every other day, yes.  Start time is 9:30, pricing model remains the same:  7€ first class, 6€ the second one in the same week, 5€ for the third and so on.  Weekly cost for all five classes is 25€, and there is no monthly fee.
So, I hope to see you there. Not for me, but for you.  Yoga has special, magic powers and my most sincere wish is that everyone reading this could feel that blissfulness at least once.  No, yoga won’t change the world:  only activism and engagement can do that.  But yoga can change your inner world and that might be a good starting point.  Om.