This is an interesting time of year for me. I am not naturally a cold weather lover but I do enjoy the pleasure of turning inward, relaxing in a warm cozy home while the weather rages outside! I love melting into my mat during an indulgent yin or restorative practice even more during this quiet time of year as though my mind is ready for quiet. I also enjoy the challenge of a heating yoga practice warming me from the inside, encouraging me to relax my shoulders from hunching against the cold and to be warm from the inside out.
Also the New Year is often the busiest time for classes, with lots of motivated students fired up by new years resolutions to establish a yoga practice & to change their life for the better! I enjoy the busy times as well as the quiet moments in business as well as in life. I enjoy watching new people discover the joy of a yoga class, how yoga practice can unlock tension, unwind stress and switch off busy minds. Especially after the festive season where we often over indulge in doing nothing, doing lots, eating rich foods and spending stressful times with family, shopping or trying to get somewhere in Xmas traffic!
The month of December is actually one of the best months in yoga classes…a great opportunity to prepare for the festive season. The effects of yoga are cumulative. The beautiful spaciousness & inner quiet we feel after a yoga class becomes more constant or at least more easily accessible with more regular practice. I am seeing more stress in my corporate classes at the moment too. Often seeing tightly wound tense students enter the class, and more relaxed happier people leave. Even people’s faces often seem to soften in a yoga class.
I am constantly thankful for the gift of teaching yoga. For having a reason to study more how yoga benefits us on so many different levels. To understand how and why people leave a yoga class looking and feeling so different to when they arrive. I love what I do and am grateful for the opportunities to share yoga with so many different people in different ways. Via yoga classes, corporate yoga, individual yoga sessions and yoga holidays. There are yoga workshops where we explore particular ideas or postures in more depth, yoga retreats and holidays where we indulge in yoga in the sunshine with good company and clean yummy food. Yoga classes are where most of us are introduced to yoga and then we often explore further how and why this practice allows us to feel so at home in ourselves. Individual yoga sessions may allow us to personalize our own yoga practice or to understand our yoga on a deeper level as well as working with specifics such as injury rehabilitation & stress relief. Maybe try some practice online too …
So I am enjoying the quieter classes of December while preparing for a busier January with a new timetable for 2016 offering more daytime classes, evening classes, children’s yoga classes, pregnancy yoga and corporate yoga classes. I am looking forward to more time to explore my own yoga practice over the festive season, being taught is something I love…and I plan to attend as many classes as possible over the festive season as well as finding time to study and to just relax. Hope to see you in more classes this December to as you make your festive preparations internally, psychologically and physically, as well as doing your Xmas shopping and preparing the home.