Happy fall yoga friends,

Here's me on halloween trying on my broccoli costume, sending a silent message out to all those candy-crazed kids to eat veggies, not candy. I'm sure they were all very receptive to that message (HA!)

In this newsletter, I want to tell you about the upcoming theme for my weekly classes and let you know about new and on-going classes. Here goes:

Yoga Pop-up for Strength and Stress Relief

• This is a four week series designed to bring you home to your body through movement linked with breath; through mindful strengthening; and through relaxing stretches. Chairs, blocks, and straps will be used to make the practice customizable.
• The class will run on Wednesdays, 10-11:15am at Chestnut Hill United Church – Nov. 30, Dec. 7, Dec. 14, Dec. 21. $50 for the series.
• Sign up at my website: jmayyoga.offeringtree.com – go to ‘payments and class packs’ and there is a selection just for this class (your purchase also serves as your registration)

New Gentle Yoga class offered at Blue Banyan Yoga Studio

Interested in taking things down a notch, but with the same attention to mindful movement and breath awareness? Come check out my new class at Blue Banyan! Tuesday mornings 9-10am. Register at their website: bluebanyanyoga.com

Upcoming class theme: Exploring the 8 limbs of yoga - Pranayama and Dharana

The Yoga Sutras, one of the classical yoga texts, describes eight limbs or facets of a yoga practice. These limbs include ways of relating to yourself and others; breath practices; movement practices; and ways of turning inward to find focus, quiet, and inner peace. One of these eight limbs is asana, which is the movement of your physical body into a variety of poses. Asana is the way many people are first introduced to yoga, and for good reason: if you go to a yoga class, moving your body will probably be the most obvious thing happening; moving your body has LOTS of benefits; and moving your body can be an entrée into breath awareness (pranayama) and mental focus (dharana). It’s interesting to note that the asanas we do in class are a recent invention (last 100 years or so). If you look at the Yoga Sutra definition of asana (2000 year ago), it was basically a comfortable position to use for meditation. I'm going to pause right and here and say you do not need to sit on the floor to do breathing and focusing practices. As one of my teachers says, pain is the loudest voice in the room, so give yourself the advantage of being comfortable, which may mean sitting in a chair (just slide forward, make sure your feet are on the ground, and get an upright pelvis and spine)

Pranayama refers to breath practices, both the kind we use during movement and the ones we use as stand-alone practices. Dharana means focused awareness or concentration. We often use breath as our point of focus, but even here there can be many different things to focus on (the feeling of breath in the nostrils, visualizing breath travelling up and down the spine, noticing your belly rise and fall, etc). Another example of focus-based meditation is TM (transcendental meditation), which uses a repeated mantra to practice mental focus.

A few quick resources (without diving into original texts)

A well-known teacher summarizes the 8 limbs:

https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-role-of-the-eight-limbs-in-contemporary-yoga-practice

A well-known teacher writes about the last three limbs (including dharana)

https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/seeking-samadhi/

some examples of pranayama practices

https://www.yogauonline.com/yoga-basics/pranayama-how-feel-more-energetic-and-powerful

this podcast episode presumes prior knowledge, but it's a nice discussion of the 8 limbs (from a podcast and teacher that I like):

https://jasonyoga.com/podcast/episode234/

On-going teaching schedule (also at jmayyoga.offeringtree.com)

• Roxborough YMCA - Fri 10-11am; Sat 9-10am
• Mt. Airy Learning Tree - Mon 7-8:15pm; Wed 10-11:15am (run on 8 week cycles)
• Blue Banyan - Tuesday 9-10am
• zoom yoga - Sunday 10-11:15am