Reclaiming Helpful Habits- A Month of Yoga Therapy Tips Starts Today

Throughout the month of May, I will be offering simple, accessible ideas to add to your daily routine to help you stay connected to your wellness goals, even in tiny ways. Watch this resource page each Monday this month for a new short video inviting you to sample small habits that can add up to big results.

Present in Changing Times

A calming, grounding 60 minute therapeutic hatha practice that intends to connect you to the undercurrent of peace that exists within us no matter what is happening around us. Expect to explore mindfulness and presence throughout mellow movement and breath and relax deeply with a guided meditation.

Back to Your Center

A practice that focuses on three of our "centers", our heart center, power center (abdomen) and the concept of a center of peace within. Sample a breath technique that visualizes placing peace in "the heart" throughout a physical sequence that seeks to stabilize the power center while creating freedom for the shoulders and making space for “the heart”.

Ground in Changing Times

A short practice including a breath technique, mantra and grounding, gentle movements to reconnect with the present moment and an undercurrent of tranquility within resistance to change.

Clear and Content

A 60 minute therapeutic hatha sequence beginning with a breath visualization intended to clear the mind, followed by a concept to help with presence, acceptance and contentment and a flow that can contribute to greater freedom in the low back and hips.

Inspired & Compassionate- A Morning Ritual

This 20 minute practice offers a technique to shift the mind away from habitual morning thinking to inspiration, presence and thoughts that welcome you wholly to a new day. You'll receive a poem to promote a more expansive mindset and a joint freeing sequence matched with breath and ideas to awaken while cultivating a kinder inner morning landscape.

April Workshop: An Intentional Morning

A 90 minute experience featuring alternative ideas to bring into your mornings to counter habitual thoughts and feelings.

-An inspirational reading to encourage new thoughts and feelings. I shared the classic poem, The Guest House by Rumi. (text to follow)

-Focus enhancing breath to support the body and mind

-The "welcoming" of intentions during a joint freeing series

-Morning movements to promote energy and refreshment

-A guided meditation utilizing the imagination to help actualize your intentions.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

You're So Sensitive

A 60 minute breath and movement experience that invites you to sensitize yourself to the felt sense of your body, a practice that cultivates presence, the doorway to healing.

Reconnection in Isolation

A movement practice intended to uplift and cultivate self-compassion when you’re spending a lot of time with yourself, or, to foster a more loving connection with yourself.

Easing Into Energy

When you need to take your time and ease into movement, a 60 minute therapeutic practice beginning on the floor, warming joints and muscles before slowly inviting you into a flow.

Take Time to Breathe

Welcome to a 75 minute class from a Toronto government-sanctioned quarantine hotel! This moderate hatha sequence is designed around mindful movement in time with full inhales and complete exhales. Slow strength, stretch and breath for calming refreshment.

Grounded and Softer

A micro practice featuring an easy breath technique to soothe critical thinking along with self-inquiry to cultivate self-compassion when you need it.

Quick Body Refresh

An antidote to stiffness due to sitting, feeling low or stuck, this standing micro practice frees the joints, warms the muscles and re-energizes.

Opening to the Good

A quick breath technique and set of movements to energize the body and remind the brain to take in the sweetness of life a little more often.

What Seeds Am I Planting?

Our practices can be a good time for cultivating specific qualities and thoughts we'd like to grow in our minds and our lives. That focus is threaded through this 75 minute therapeutic hatha flow using posture, breath visualization and guided meditation to support the concept.

Press Pause

Our time on the mat can be a moment to press pause on our day and connect with how we are feeling physically, mentally and emotionally. Pausing with what is can help us make space for skillful thought and action moving forward. Expect to "pause" throughout this moderate physical practice for a chance to feel and be rather than do and achieve.

The Practice of Holding What Is

An engaging 60 minute practice that encourages your awareness to tether to sensations of the hands inviting an opportunity for presence and an embodiment of receiving what the moment offers. A therapeutic and balancing sequence for the body, blended with the opportunity for acceptance for the mind.

Sitting with What Is

A 15 minute seated practice that includes a series of skills to help us be present with the moment that is, even if we are resistant to a situation and our feelings about it. May we remember that the only certainty about what is, is that it will change.

Balance for Body, Breath and Mind

An offering of movements to provide flexibility where there is chronic tightness and strength where there is often weakness along with techniques for the breath and focus skills for the mind. Practices that cultivate balance can help part of us stay tethered to the consistency of contentment in the face of inevitable change.

Effort and Ease

A creative, strengthening and focus-enhancing 60 minute sequence is offered with the invitation to apply a balance of effort and ease throughout.