Variety in Yoga - some of my classes

My class themes are varied.

Sometimes we focus on one of the 5 Yamas (social restraints) or Niyamas (self-disciplines) from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. The Yamas are kindness/non-harming, truthfulness, abundance/non-stealing, non-possessiveness, & self-reliance. The Niyama are discipline, contentment, purity, self-study & devotion to a higher power. I have taught classes with each pose focusing on a yama, but I prefer to chose one yama or niyama for the entire class and apply it to our pranayama/breath, asana/pose, dristi/focus, bhanda/locks, as well as our meditation.

Sometimes we will work on a group of asana/poses, like a twists, and see where we’re opening up.

Other times my classes can build towards a particular asana/pose, like scorpion, over the course of 8 weeks.

In March & April 2020 we worked on each of the 7 chakra in each of 7 classes, starting with being grounded in our base chakra and developing up to our crowns. You can find a 7day yoga sequence of this in my Challenges section of my WixApp.

Here are two class plan outlines for June 2020:

Playful & Childish

We will be playing with a fun animal movement yoga story about a dog waking up and going on a journey where it meets frogs and lions, cobras and elephant, before crossing bridges and sheltering under trees (you can imadgine where this childish play of yoga poses is going, so get your playful head on!). This is all in acknowledgement of the UN World Environment Day on Sunday. https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/ There are many interesting art, photographic and talks planned, take a look and join in.

Yoga for Cyclists

In the second week in June we will be doing yoga for cyclists as we enter Bike Week, delivered by Cycling UK. https://www.cyclinguk.org/bikeweek. Here is the outline sequence for this.

Meditations

Our meditations will continue to be a Buddhist themed in June 2020. Last month we practiced Meta meditations (contentment & happiness) for Mental Health week. This month we work on Karuna (compassion) meditations. In Meta practice we wish joy for ourselves, our friends and family, those we don’t know and even those we don’t like. Karuna is where we wish ourselves and others freedom from suffering, in addition we can wish them to be happier, healthier, more fortunate and more successful (depending on what is appropriate to us & them).

I find that visualisations are useful for some people, as are practicing Aparigraha/non-attachment meditations through visualisation.