New Yoga Classes this and next week – and workshops for the summer!

Yoga

Monday Beginners 20th May-24th June 7.30-8.45

Tuesday Power Yoga 14th May – 18th June 7.30-8.45

Wednesday Beginning a Flow Practice 15th May – 19th June 7.30-8.45

Thursday Power Yoga 16th May – 20th June 7.30-8.45

Irish Wheelchair Association

45 euro per course

concessions available – booking essential

looseyoga@gmail.com

09781205

0861286449

“Every thought you produce, everything you say, every action, creates your future: take control of one thought, one word, one act, NOW, and you can change the entire course of history!”

“Do not think of yourself as a small, compressed, suffering thing. Think of yourself as graceful and expanding, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the time.” –Light on Life by B.K.S. Iyengar

“The highest spiritual practice is self-observation without judgment.” –Swami Kripalu

Humility is endless

Having wanted to be a writer for a lifetime (second, only, to wanting to become a doctor) I now find myself undergoing the crucifying humiliations of re-reading what I publish here (and elsewhere). In that sense, writing is very like meditation, an endless quest to get to the bottom of what it is you’re trying to formulate, what you characterise, where you’re looking from. Only to find that this is the view from nowhere, and not only that, but you got distracted in recording it and let the camera move and now all you’ve done is left a blurred mess behind as evidence, not of your brilliance, but of your fallibility.

So, my post on yoga for mums and babies is less literate than I’d like, and I’ll go back over it sometime. And sometime, too, I’ll organise this so there’s a page of links to practices that might allow you to feel yourself into what’s going on for you right now. Yoga is meditation, really: it’s just that you move to feel what moves and what is still so it’s a kind of dance with stillness, getting the restlessness to manifest itself, shaping it through a series that yearns to be perfectly beautiful but more often ends up being resistance built into a block that then requires a massive effort of disengagement to free itself back into a reflection of the flow. Oh, dear. Humility. I will post, and regret, post, and regret. Yet this will be a practice in itself, showing that the ego need demand nothing more of itself than that it recognises how it winds things into complicated knots when really, things are just as they are.

Mum and baby Yoga

I’m just beginning to develop ideas for a Mum and baby class. Here’s the start (you don’t have to have a baby to practice this!)

Hold your baby or have them on a cushion alongside you. Begin by focusing on your breathing and your baby’s breathing. You can put a hand on baby’s tummy and tune in if you like. Notice how you feel. Things are as bad or as good as they seem. No need to add anything extra. Now see if you can lie back and relax a little, but keep your attention on your baby. Allow yourself to respond and be sensitive – your space, your love can relax into the space.

Bent knees, lie down. Baby is wherever is comfy against your legs, on tummy, wherever. Support with one or both hands. Begin pelvic tilts by tucking tail bone under, really gentle rocking motion for the baby, really nice for toning abs and releasing low back (and also, when you add a ‘lift’ to the pelvic floor, really good for toning up pelvic floor – ‘lift’ is mula bandha (like you need to go to the loo! Squeeze!).

Pelvic lifts – hold baby (or have baby alongside, looking at you, you looking with love and affection) and lift hips off the floor. If your low back feels strong, you can curl into this lift, otherwise just lift the whole unit of the back in one motion, but in either case, as you inhale, squeeze the pelvic floor, as you exhale, relax. See if you can hold this lift for ten breaths. Lift and lower baby if they are restless. Pay attention to your own restlessness. Just keep coming back to an acceptance of whatever is happening right now. Nothing is more or less than it is for you now. Open into it! Feel great compassion reflected between yourself and your baby who wants to be loved, and wants to give, but without ego. More next week (this is an experiment – I’m not charging for these classes, so I’ll upload what works, when we’ve had a few sessions…)

 

What is ‘spirit’?

What if “spirit” just meant “attitude”? As in, “that’s the spirit!” meaning, “that’s the way to do it!”

What yoga practice means to me is just this: get into the habit, the spirit, of realizing what is going on. It’s a physical thing – you realize what position you’re in, literally—but it’s also a psychological and even an environmental thing.

You have an attitude, a way of relating to, the phenomena of the world. This attitude prevails throughout your relationships. You may think you are expressing love in one relationship and expressing indifference or even hatred in another. But both are attachments, and if the attachment holds the pattern of the relationship in a rigid set of expectations, then it becomes inflexiblle, stuck. A spirit of compassionate detachment, on the other hand, recognises that while, of course, being human, we are involved and partial, we also have the capacity to see all our relationships within a broader compass so that we step back from the immediate involvement and see how the particular context of our conditions has brought us to this point. In this spirit, we can allow ourselves to see the patterns and their repetitive demands and sometimes, even, the very act of watching creates new layers of possibility so that what we thought was always so begins to alter and the thing that remains true is that when there is allowance for change and flow to take place, there, the spirit of joie de vivre, or of letting go, or, in Eliot’s words, ‘the dance’, is. May you see that the spirit of the dance is in your attitude, in the way you see yourself seeing. And may you have an extraordinary day!

errisheadsun24mar2013-002.jpg

Yoga starts again this week. I like to go for a run before doing Yoga asana practice and the weather, even though it’s cold, has been ideal for running lately. You might be able to make out the letters ‘EIRE’ written in white stones on the grass for pilots during WW2 while underneath the parting in the clouds is Eagle Island with the lighthouse.

Reblogged from ANIMAL POST:

CHAD

Reblogged from ANIMAL POST:

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Over a two-day period a week ago, heavily armed poachers on horseback slaughtered 89 elephants near Tikem on the southwest border of Chad and Cameroon. At least 30 of the animals were pregnant. Among the victims were 12 calves.

Believed to number as many as 50, the poachers are now believed to be heading to an area closer to the border of Cameroon where upwards of 800 elephants remain unprotected.

Read more… 493 more words

Progress for Animals Throughout the States

Reblogged from Animal Connection:

Yesterday was a remarkable day in state legislatures across the country, with a number of key animal protection bills moving forward through critical stages of the legislative process.

In New Jersey, the Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee approved A. 3250, sponsored by Assemblyman Gilbert “Whip” Wilson, D-Camden, to phase out the extreme confinement of breeding pigs in gestation crates.

Read more… 753 more words

OLD TOWN EAGLES

Reblogged from ANIMAL POST:

This man, photographed in Lijang, a city in The Three Parallel Rivers Region of Yunnan, China, said his eagle caught all of its own food – although, he admitted, it was often rabbits he purchased and released for the bird to catch.

The fake cowboy and 4 other men, all dressed in identical outfits, each with a golden eagle, stroll the streets looking for tourists willing to pay10 Yuan, about $1.50, to have their photo taken with an eagle perched on their arm.

Read more… 53 more words

Yoga in Erris!

Dear Yogis and Potential Yogis in Erris,
Just to say that this is the last week of Yoga before we have a break for a week. We will start again on the 26th March. I know it’s Easter Week but I’m happy to lead Yoga asana practice with you for Peace so I hope you will feel the same!
Please could you book in advance (or, if unavoidable, on first night, 26th, 27th or 28th March) for the six week series of classes (ending 30 April, 1st, 2nd May)
March into May with a spring in your step and a light heart!
Tues: Getting Better
Wed: Absolute Beginners
Thurs: It Must Be Love
All classes 7.30-9 Irish Wheelchair Association 45 euro per course (concessions available) 10 euro drop in rate if space available
You need a yoga mat and clothes you can stretch in.
You can book by calling 0861286449
or online at  www.yogazazen.wordpress.com (when I’ve worked out how to put in a booking page, and in the meantime, by commenting on this post!)
or email me at looseyoga@gmaill.com
Thanks! Lucy Weir