Summer Yoga Session

Once again I will be holding 2 shorter summer sessions for the regular yoga classes:

5 weeks starting June 12, 13, 14 (finishing July 10, 11, 12): $70 6 weeks starting August 1, 2, 3 (finishing Sept. 4, 5, 6): $85

Please call or email to reserve your place, 577-1963

Prenatal classes will be ongoing, with a 2 week break at the end of July.

Habits

When we are quiet on our yoga mats it is easy to be a witness to our habits. Perhaps there is a little voice that tells you that you are not very good at the postures, that your mind wanders too much or that you'll never be very good at this.

Maybe you become easily irritated at someone who arrives late, or who is making noise, or you are upset and unable to focus because of noises outside of the room.

Or perhaps there is no one on your yoga mat and you are at home. Maybe you have difficulty keeping commitments to yourself, or you tend to put others' needs before your own and not take time for yourself.

For myself, when I attend a yoga class, I have an idea of how I like a class and a teacher to be, so it affords me the opportunity to witness my judging mind.

Living in a society that seems to promote perfection, we tend to be hard on ourselves for our shortcomings. I love the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. Following are his suggestions for mindfulness and loving-kindness for ourselves and our habits.

"Our 'habit energy' is very strong. It might have been handed down to us by several generations of ancestors. So to deal with habit energy and not suppress it, we have to be mindful all day long. And if the habit energy begins to show its head we only need to breathe in and out mindfully and say, "Hello, my old habit energy, I know you are there, I will take good care of you.

That is enough to keep your habit energy from leading the way. The energy of mindfulness involves tenderly holding the habit energy and taking care of it like a big sister taking care of the younger sister. Every time your habit energy is recognized and embraced tenderly like that, it will lose some of its strength, and the next time it appears it will be a little bit weaker. And you will no longer feel that it is stronger than you because the other kind of energy - the energy of mindfulness, the energy of loving kindness - has been cultivated in you.

The practice is not hard; in fact, it is pleasant, and you realize that you don't have to remove all your pain, your sorrow, in order to be happy. It is as if you have a boat - then you can carry hundreds of pounds of rocks and the rocks will not sink in the river. But if you don't have a boat, then a pebble you throw into the river will sink."

I appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh's suggestion that our habits may come from our ancestors. (smile) On the yoga mat we develop awareness and in turn strive to expand the practice of mindfulness, self acceptance and lovingkindness throughout our daily lives.

I look forward to seeing you!

Sue-Anne