Category: yoga
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When Goals Fail
In the beginning the most difficult yoga pose was getting in the car. I’d reached a point in my life where I always wore elastic waistbands and t-shirts so it wasn’t even a matter of finding the right clothes, my yoga pants needed to attend class. No strength is greater than the moment when I…
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Adversity creates strength
What helped me to form the habit of a regular yoga practice was the promise that it would calm my anxiety. It didn’t. Prescription drugs worked against me, nothing addictive, just a side effect that the doctors felt like was irrelevant compared to what it was supposed to cure. It isn’t irrelevant if you’re living…
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The First Step
January 1, 2013 I went to my first yoga class, not because it was a New Year’s Resolution but because I had the day off from work. Yoga can mean anything from exercise based to one that is closer to meditation to yet another that is more like a celebration of life. I ended up…
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Why Yoga?
I was in a meeting at the YMCA and this woman was trying to convince me to try PiYo. She referred to it as yoga on steroids as if that is the very thing that would make take her class. I replied, “I’m not into fitness.” Given that I’m a fitness instructor at the YMCA…
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Accessible Yoga
I hear the phrase accessible yoga a lot lately. Basically I think they mean yoga that anyone can do rather than the pretzel stuff only the flexible and strong can do. I worked in a studio once and the owner gave me this advice regarding my budding yoga career, don’t let them put you in…
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Sound Healing
Sound healing is meditation to a soundscape. For me it can be transformative. Something about sound healing shifts my mental state so that I can get enough distance between myself and my problems to see them from outside my mind. Usually that is when solutions present themselves, even if the solution is simply me thinking,…
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Unexpected
My very first yoga class as a student was at a YMCA. That class was on New Year’s Day, not because I had made any kind of resolution, but because I had the day off from work. Looking back I think the teacher wanted to make it clear that yoga is not for the faint…
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Meditation skills
Meditation. Difficult. I’d rather spend an hour practicing yoga as most people know it in the West, a series of poses followed by a very short rest. I had a teacher say once that meditation is like going to the gym for your brain. The only time it isn’t a “workout” for me is in…
Laura's RVA Yoga 