Open House at Inner Life Yoga Studio

January 25: How to Sequence Your Poses and Actions to Deepen Your Practice:	In this workshop we explore how the order in which we practice poses and the actions we choose to practice in each pose helps us progress into deeper poses, and into states of greater connection with the core of our energy and awareness. This is a chance to learn how to safely make your own practice more exploratory and more transformative.
February 22: Patanjali’s Eight Limbs as Integral Practice.	The practice of asanas sooner or later brings us face to face with our own limitations. We can choose to ignore them, we can try to plow through them, we can resign to ‘working with them’, or we can try to welcome them as tools that urge us to be more present. Often our limitations present themselves in physical ways—limits of flexibility, strength, balance, etc. If we find effective ways to accept these limitations and we caringly and carefully proceed through the natural changes that occur with uninterrupted and alert practice, then we may encounter limitations in other spheres of our lives. We may encounter emotional, social or intellectual challenges, as well as spiritual challenges in which we may even question the motivations for our practice. Patanjali’s Eight Limbs (ethical principles, self disciplines, postures, regulation of breath, discipline of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption) together constitutes an integral practice that can help us navigate through (and grow from) such challenges. In this workshop we begin with asana, and explore an intuitive way to practice all eight limbs.
March 28: Bending Forward to Help your Backbends	When and how to incorporate forward bending poses into a backbend practice. Standing poses and inversions are very effective ways to prepare for backbends. But it is also useful to practice forward bends in preparation for backbends, provided that we practice the forward bends with that particular intention in mind.
April 18: Couples/Partner Yoga	(only one partner needs to have experience with yoga, and it is not necessary to be a 'couple'). Yoga means 'union' or 'to yoke', which implies relationship. We quickly realize what relationship means in the context of asana practice, that is, how the body responds (or doesn't) to our volition. The longer we practice, the more we refine the links between our body and our mind. Over time we may come to sense how an urging toward inner peace arises out of the refinement of the links between our body and mind, but we may not recognize that refining the inner links between our mind and body requires a corresponding refinement of our relationships with other people and with our external lives in general. What happens on the outside reflects and reinforces who we are on the inside. As we do poses with help from a partner, we may come to know an aspect of the pose (and ourselves) that is difficult to know otherwise. As the helper, we become sensitive to our partner's needs and we come to know more clearly how our actions and adjustments affect them.
May 23: Home Practice Workshop:	Here we will look at how to structure a home practice if you are just starting out, and how to move out of plateaus if you are experienced. The discussion will focus on a) general guidelines for practicing, b) stages of practice, c) dimensions of practice, d) how to develop an intuitive sense for guiding your practice, e) feedback on your practice.

296-1744

sbleher@msn.com

www.innerlifeyoga.com