CYCo. Connection

This Week at CYCo.

2012-01-23T08:21:00.001-05:00

Sign up for any of these at mycyco.com.

YOGA WITHOUT BACK PAIN
Sara Hauber leads this open series (drop-ins are welcome) on Saturdays in January, 2:00–3:15 p.m. $15 per session.

LOVE IS PRESENCE
Our popular series Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training resumes on Monday, January 23, at 7:15 p.m. Abra Fortune Chernik leads the six-week series ($120), which also welcomes you as a drop-in for any class ($25). This session’s topic: Waking Up from the Trance of Habit, Compulsion, and Addiction.

FREE COMMUNITY FLOW CLASS
Michelle Johnson is back from her service trip to Kenya and eager to share her experience. Join her for a free community flow class Saturday, February 4, 2:00–3:30 p.m.

KIDS’ YOGA
Come play with Michele Nettesheim at our monthly kids’ yoga class, Sunday, February 5, 9:30–10:15 a.m. Ages 3–8, $10.

SAVE UP TO 40% WITH OUR NEW MEMBERSHIP
With the new year, we are rolling out a new membership program. Commit to six months, and you’ll get eight classes a month for $70 ($50 for students/teachers/rescue workers), with 10 percent off workshops and retail. Ask at the front desk, or sign up online.

FREE CLASSES FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

This Week at CYCo.

2012-01-08T09:28:00.003-05:00

Check our workshops page for details and registration.

SAVE UP TO 40% WITH OUR NEW MEMBERSHIP
With the new year, we are rolling out a new membership program. Commit to six months, and you’ll get eight classes a month for $70, with 10 percent off workshops and retail. Ask at the front desk, or sign up online.

FREE CLASSES FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

YOGA WITHOUT BACK PAIN
Sara Hauber leads this open series (drop-ins are welcome) on Saturdays in January, 2:00–3:15 p.m. $15 per session.

RESTORATIVE YOGA
Treat yourself to the joy of restorative yoga, a practice for anyone to unwind fully while supported by bolsters and blankets. Ann Burrus leads a session on Saturday, January 21, 3:00–5:00 p.m., $25.

DONATION CLASS FOR CAMP CELEBRATE
Join Blake Tedder for an all-levels yoga class in support of the NC Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Hospitals. Bring a donation in any amount for Camp Celebrate, the Burn Center’s program for burn survivors aged 7 to 15. Sunday, January 22, 1:30–3:00 p.m.

LOVE IS PRESENCE
Our popular series Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training resumes on Monday, January 23, at 7:15 p.m. Abra Fortune Chernik leads the six-week series ($120), which also welcomes you as a drop-in for any class ($25). This session’s topic: Waking Up from the Trance of Habit, Compulsion, and Addiction.

Yoga without Back Pain

2012-01-02T08:26:00.003-05:00

Join Sara Hauber for an open series on yoga without back pain. Sign up for all four sessions for $50, or drop in for $15 each. We start January 7, 2–3:30 p.m., and run through January 28. Sign up here or drop in.

Sara describes her work:

This Week at CYCo.

2012-01-01T12:16:00.002-05:00

Details on all of these at mycyco.com!

SAVE UP TO 40% WITH OUR NEW MEMBERSHIP
With the new year, we are rolling out a new membership program. Commit to six months, and you’ll get eight classes a month for $70, with 10 percent off workshops and retail. Ask at the front desk, or sign up online.

FREE CLASSES FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

FREE COMMUNITY PARTNER YOGA
Join Jeff Cobb and Alexandra DeSiato on Saturday, January 7, 2:00–4:00 p.m., for a free community partner yoga class. Bring a friend, or we’ll find you partners!

YOGA WITHOUT BACK PAIN
Sara Hauber leads this four-week open series (drop-ins are welcome) on Saturdays, January 7–28, 2:00–3:15 p.m. $50, or $15 per class.

RESTORATIVE YOGA
Treat yourself to the joy of restorative yoga, a practice for anyone to unwind fully while supported by bolsters and blankets. Ann Burrus leads a session on Saturday, January 21, 3:00–5:00 p.m., $25.

LOVE IS PRESENCE
Our popular series Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training resumes on Monday, January 23, at 7:15 p.m. Abra Fortune Chernik leads the six-week series ($120), which also welcomes you as a drop-in for any class ($25). This session’s topic: Waking Up from the Trance of Habit, Compulsion, and Addiction.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-12-26T12:53:00.003-05:00

Sign up for any of these online at our website.

HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Give yourself and your loved ones the gift of yoga! Our holiday special, on sale through 12/31, offers twelve classes for $120. Our passcards never expire, and they can be shared.

TREATS FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

NEW YEAR’S EVE SCHEDULE
For New Year’s Eve, we are offering an abbreviated schedule.
Loving Kindness & Flow Yoga with Michelle Johnson, noon–2:00 p.m., $25 ($20 before 12/26)
Back to Basics Yoga with Courtney Long, 4:30–5:45 p.m., regular class prices.
All other classes are suspended.

NEW YEAR’S DAY SCHEDULE
On New Year’s Day, we hold our regular class schedule, with these additions:
Kids’ Yoga (ages 3–8) with Michele Nettesheim, 9:30–10:45 a.m., $10
New Year’s Day Core Class with Alexandra DeSiato, 2:00–3:30 p.m., $15

FREE COMMUNITY PARTNER YOGA
Join Jeff Cobb and Alexandra DeSiato on Saturday, January 7, 2:00–4:00 p.m., for a free community partner yoga class. Bring a friend, or we’ll find you partners!

YOGA WITHOUT BACK PAIN
Sara Hauber leads this four-week open series (drop-ins are welcome) on Saturdays, January 7–28, 2:00–3:15 p.m. $50, or $15 per class.

Karma Connection: North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center

2011-12-23T11:57:00.002-05:00

This quarter, we have chosen the Camp Celebrate, an outreach of the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center, as our Karma Connection. Be on the lookout for donation classes, and meanwhile, read more about Camp Celebrate!

Camp Celebrate is a weekend camp for children ages 7–15 who have survived burn injuries. Created in 1982 in response to an inability to find traditional camping opportunities for a group of young burn patients at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center, Camp Celebrate was the first camping experience of its kind. Most campers have been treated at the Burn Center, but Camp Celebrate is open to any pediatric burn survivor in North Carolina.

Activities include swimming, canoeing, arts and crafts, fishing, an annual Sunday family picnic, as well as an opportunity to meet other kids who share the experience of having been burned. A number of campers return year after year, and some have returned as adults to serve as counselors and share their experiences and knowledge with the children.

Volunteers from across the state, including firefighters and Jaycees, join the Burn Center staff in providing campers a fun and enriching experience by serving as counselors, program staff, counselor-in-training mentors, and logistics assistants.

CYCo. instructor Blake Tedder is a burn survivor, a trained peer supporter for burned patients and their families, and a counselor every year at Camp Celebrate.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-12-19T13:30:00.003-05:00

Sign up for any of these specials and workshops at our website.

HOLIDAY SPECIAL

Give yourself and your loved ones the gift of yoga! Our holiday special offers twelve classes for $120. Our passcards never expire, and they can be shared.

TREATS FOR LOCALS

Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

CHRISTMAS SCHEDULE

We will offer two classes on Saturday, December 24 (Christmas Eve), both free:
Yoga with Sage Rountree, noon–1:30 p.m.
Back to Basics with Courtney Long, 4:30–5:45 p.m.
There are no classes on Sunday, December 25, and Lisa Lashuk’s Mindful Yoga on Friday, December 23, will be suspended for holiday travel.

NEW YEAR’S EVE SCHEDULE

For New Year’s Eve, we are offering an abbreviated schedule.
Loving Kindness & Flow Yoga with Michelle Johnson, noon–2:00 p.m., $25 ($20 before 12/26)
Back to Basics Yoga with Courtney Long, 4:30–5:45 p.m., regular class prices.
All other classes are suspended.

NEW YEAR’S DAY SCHEDULE

On New Year’s Day, we hold our regular class schedule, with these additions:
Kids’ Yoga (ages 3–8) with Michele Nettesheim, 9:30–10:45 a.m., $10
New Year’s Day Core Class with Alexandra DeSiato, 2:00–3:30 p.m., $15

This Week at CYCo.

2011-12-12T15:39:00.002-05:00

Sign up here!

HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Give yourself and your loved ones the gift of yoga! Our holiday special offers twelve classes for $120. Our passcards never expire, and they can be shared.

TREATS FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Stay centered and grounded through December using practices learned at Yoga to Manage Your Mood, taught by licensed clinical social workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson. The program meets Sundays through December 18, 6:00–7:30 p.m. Drop in for $25.

YOGA MALA
Amp up your practice with 108 sun salutations for the solstice on Saturday, December 17, 2:00–4:15 p.m. Jennie Dickson, Michelle Johnson, Brooks Rainey Pearson, and Lauren Sacks each lead a round of 27 sun salutations, with plenty of room for modifications and a lovely savasana and snacks afterward. $30.

RESTORATIVE YOGA
Renew your spirit in restorative yoga with Ann Burrus Saturday, December 17, 3:00–5:00 p.m. This lovely practice will give you time and space for stillness, reflection, and renewal during a busy time of year. Relax onto bolsters and blankets as your nervous system resets. Perfect for all ages and all levels. $25.

CHRISTMAS SCHEDULE
We will offer two classes on Saturday, December 24 (Christmas Eve), both free:
Yoga with Sage Rountree, noon–1:30 p.m.
Back to Basics with Courtney Long, 4:30–5:45 p.m.
There are no classes on Sunday, December 25, and Lisa Lashuk’s Mindful Yoga on Friday, December 23, will be suspended for holiday travel.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-12-04T16:41:00.001-05:00

Sign up for workshops here!

WINTER SCHEDULE
Our winter schedule begins December 1 and runs through the end of February. Please pick up a paper copy at the front desk, or visit the always-correct schedule online at mycyco.com.

HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Give yourself and your loved ones the gift of yoga! Our holiday special offers twelve classes for $120. Our passcards never expire, and they can be shared.

TREATS FOR LOCALS
Bring a friend who is new to the studio and if you’re both local, your class is free for both of you! This is in addition to our new first-class-free-for-locals policy.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Stay centered and grounded through December using practices learned at Yoga to Manage Your Mood, taught by licensed clinical social workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson. The program meets Sundays through December 18, 6:00–7:30 p.m. Drop in for $25.

YOGA MALA
Amp up your practice with 108 sun salutations for the solstice on Saturday, December 17, 2:00–4:15 p.m. Four of our teachers each lead a round of 27 sun salutations, with plenty of room for modifications and a lovely savasana and snacks afterward. $25 before 12/20, $30 after.

RESTORATIVE YOGA
Renew your spirit in restorative yoga with Ann Burrus Saturday, December 17, 3:00–5:00 p.m. This lovely practice will give you time and space for stillness, reflection, and renewal during a busy time of year. Relax onto bolsters and blankets as your nervous system resets. Perfect for all ages and all levels. $25.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-11-27T09:09:00.001-05:00

Visit our Workshops page to sign up!

WINTER SCHEDULE
Our winter schedule begins December 1 and runs through the end of February. Please pick up a paper copy at the front desk, or visit the always-correct schedule online at mycyco.com.

FREE COMMUNITY YOGA SATURDAY
Michelle Johnson offers this free class Saturday, December 3, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Learn about Michelle’s upcoming trip to Africa as part of the Africa Yoga Project! Sign up at the desk or online to reserve your space.

KIDS’ YOGA
Michele Nettesheim leads this monthly class appropriate for ages 3–8. Come play or drop off your child and enjoy a little quiet time for coffee or shopping! Sunday, December 4, 9:30–10:15 a.m., $10.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Stay centered and grounded through December using practices learned at Yoga to Manage Your Mood, taught by licensed clinical social workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson. The program meets Sundays through December 18, 6:00–7:30 p.m. Drop in for $25.

HOLIDAY SPECIAL
Give yourself and your loved ones the gift of yoga! Our holiday special offers twelve classes for $120. Our passcards never expire, and they can be shared.

YOGA MALA & RESTORATIVE YOGA
Looking ahead, we have two fun programs on Saturday, December 17. Amp up your practice with 108 sun salutations for the solstice (2:00–4:15 p.m.), or renew your spirit in restorative yoga with Ann Burrus (3:00–5:00 p.m.).

This Week at CYCo.

2011-11-14T16:39:00.001-05:00

Visit our class schedule here and our workshops listing here!

THANKSGIVING SCHEDULE

Yoga is a great activity to do with your visiting family and friends—or without them! See below for our holiday specials. The following classes are canceled for Thanksgiving, while all other classes before and after Thanksgiving will go as scheduled.

Prenatal Yoga, Wednesday, 11/23, 5:45 p.m.
Pilates, Wednesday, 11/23, 6:00 p.m.
Ashtanga Yoga, Friday, 11/25, 9:00 a.m.
Mindful Yoga, Friday, 11/25, 10:30 a.m.
Yoga, Friday, 11/25, noon (please join us for Power Flow Yoga at noon that day!)

FREE THANKSGIVING DAY YOGA

Michelle Johnson leads this class with a focus on cultivating gratitude Thursday, November 24, 10:00–11:30 a.m. Bring your family members and join in our communal appreciation of abundance. Sign up online or at the desk to reserve your spaces!

POST-THANKSGIVING PURIFICATION

Then, after the feast, join special guest teacher Gina Caputo for a Post-Thanksgiving detox practice called Chalana Sadhana. Saturday, November 26, 2:00–4:00 p.m., $30, $25 if paid by November 19.

SUNDAY EVENING MINDFULNESS

Lisa Lashuk guides Momentous Meditations Sundays, 7:00–8:15 p.m., through the end of November. Proceeds go to Safe Passage NC. Drop in for $15.

SPECIALS FOR MEN AND UNIFORMED WORKERS

Every Tuesday is Men’s Night. Our evening classes are only $6 for the guys! And remember: rescue workers and military always pay only $10 per class.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-11-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

Sign up for any of these at our new Workshops page!

YAMUNA BODY ROLLING

Body worker Owen Dodge returns Saturday, November 12, 2:00–4:00 p.m., with his Yamuna Body Rolling balls for a self-massage workshop that will leave you both relaxed and energized. $30, $25 early bird before November 5.

FREE THANKSGIVING DAY YOGA

Michelle Johnson leads this class with a focus on cultivating gratitude Thursday, November 24, 10:00–11:30 a.m. Bring your family members and join in our communal appreciation of abundance. Sign up online or at the desk to reserve your spaces!

POST-THANKSGIVING PURIFICATION

Then, after the feast, join special guest teacher Gina Caputo for a Post-Thanksgiving detox practice called Chalana Sadhana. Saturday, November 26, 2:00–4:00 p.m., $30, $25 if paid by November 19.

SUNDAY EVENING MINDFULNESS

We offer two open series classes to wind down your weekend. Michelle Johnson and Beth Hayden lead Yoga to Manage Your Mood, 6:00–7:30 p.m. Drop in for $25. This series wraps up Sunday, November 13, and resumes in December. Lisa Lashuk guides Momentous Meditations Sundays, 7:00–8:15 p.m., through the end of November. Drop in for $15.

SPECIALS FOR MEN AND UNIFORMED WORKERS

Every Tuesday is Men’s Night. Our evening classes are only $6 for the guys! And remember: rescue workers and military always pay only $10 per class.

The Top 5 Reasons for Taking Back to Basics Yoga

2011-11-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

It is wonderful to have so many great classes and teachers to choose from at Carrboro Yoga Company. At the same time, it might be difficult to pick just the right class for you. On Saturday afternoons at 4:30, I offer Back to Basics Yoga, which is a nice blend of detailed and enabling alignment instruction and a practical exploration of the philosophy of Yoga.

If you are a student of Yoga and any of the following apply, Back to Basics Yoga may be just the right class for you:

5. You want to develop your skills in the most commonly practiced postures;
4. You feel that most of your classmates are more advanced than you;
3. You would enjoy a smaller class with more personal attention from the teacher;
2. You have been away from Yoga for a while and want to re-establish your practice;
1. You want to learn how Yoga and the philosophy of Yoga complements everyday life.

And if this reminds you of any of your friends who practice Yoga, be sure to share this with them!

—Courtney Long

This Week at CYCo.

2011-10-31T07:56:00.003-04:00

Sign up for any of these at our Workshops page.

FREE YOGA FOR BALANCE
Sage Rountree leads our monthly community class as an investigation into balance. Saturday, November 5, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up online or at the desk to reserve your spot.

TEACHING YOGA TO ATHLETES
Sage Rountree also teaches an intensive on working with athletes. Appropriate for yoga teachers, personal trainers, PE teachers, and coaches, this weekend workshop investigates the athlete’s needs in yoga class. November 5–6, noon–6 p.m., $250.

YOGA 101
The next session of Yoga 101 with Cheryl Diegel begins November 2 and runs seven weeks. Perfect for your friends who are interested in yoga but don’t know where to start—or for yourself, as a refresher course. Wednesday evenings, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $84.

KIDS’ YOGA
Our monthly class is perfect for ages 3 to 8. Michele Nettesheim leads, Sunday, November 6, 9:30–10:15 a.m., $10.

PREPARED CHILDBIRTH
Paula Huffman, RN, teaches this class to prepare expectant couples for labor and delivery. Sundays, 1:30–4:00 p.m., November 6–December 18 (no class Thanksgiving weekend). $135.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Licensed Clinical Social Workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead Yoga to Manage Your Mood, a four-week open series focusing on techniques to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. The class meets Sundays, 6:00–7:30 p.m., $25.

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS
Lisa Lashuk teaches this open series featuring gentle yoga and guided meditations docused on creating a momentous life. Sunday evenings, 7:00–8:15 p.m., $15. A large portion of the proceeds go to Safe Passage NC.

YAMUNA BODY ROLLING
Body worker Owen Dodge returns November 12, 2:00–4:00 p.m., with his Yamuna Body Rolling balls for a self-massage workshop that will leave you both relaxed and energized. $30, $25 early bird before November 5.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-10-24T07:58:00.003-04:00

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Licensed Clinical Social Workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead Yoga to Manage Your Mood, a four-week open series focusing on techniques to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. The class meets Sundays, 6:00–7:30 p.m., $25.

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS
Lisa Lashuk teaches this open series featuring gentle yoga and guided meditations docused on creating a momentous life. Sunday evenings, 7:00–8:15 p.m., $15. A large portion of the proceeds go to Safe Passage NC.

YOGA 101
The next session of Yoga 101 with Cheryl Diegel begins November 2 and runs seven weeks. Perfect for your friends who are interested in yoga but don’t know where to start—or for yourself, as a refresher course. Wednesday evenings, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $84.

FREE YOGA FOR BALANCE
Sage Rountree leads our monthly community class as an investigation into balance. Saturday, November 5, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up online or at the desk to reserve your spot.

TEACHING YOGA TO ATHLETES
Sage Rountree also teaches an intensive on working with athletes. Appropriate for yoga teachers, personal trainers, PE teachers, and coaches, this weekend workshop investigates the athlete’s needs in yoga class. November 5–6, noon–6 p.m., $250.

YAMUNA BODY ROLLING
Body worker Owen Dodge returns November 12, 2:00–4:00 p.m., with his Yamuna Body Rolling balls for a self-massage workshop that will leave you both relaxed and energized. $30, $25 early bird before November 5.

Find all of these programs on our workshops page.

Yoga to Manage Your Mood

2011-10-18T08:43:00.002-04:00

Using Yoga to Transform Your Mood

Have you ever had the experience of going to a yoga class feeling worried, anxious, or with a little case of blues?

Have you ever left a yoga class feeling like your whole perspective on the world transformed?
Has child pose felt like the respite you needed?

Has warrior I ever made you connect to your strength?

Has a back bend helped you connect with your deepest desire?

Have you ever chanted and your heart opened up more than you thought that it could?

Have you ever experienced focusing on just your inhale and exhale?

Well if you answered YES or NO to any of the questions it seems like Yoga to Manage Your Mood might just be the right workshop series for you?

Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson are offering a four part workshop series focused on Yoga to Manage Your Mood. Through asana, mantra, chanting, visualization, chakra clearing, and meditation we will quiet monkey mind for anxiety and activate your prana for depression. Yoga is powerfully healing and the combination of these tools will definitely change your life and mood. This workshop is all levels and you can come to one class or sign up for all four.

Sunday evenings starting October 23rd from 6:00pm-7:30pm. Learn techniques to alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety in a warm, supportive environment. Sign up for all four weeks for $80, or drop in for $25 a session.

If you have questions about the workshop contact Michelle Johnson via email- michelle.socialworker@gmail.com

This Week at CYCo.

2011-10-17T08:11:00.000-04:00

For more on all of these, please visit our workshops page.

POWER FLOW YOGA BY DONATION
Friday, October 21, Teresa Perez’s noon Power Flow Yoga class will be by donation to Safe Passage NC. Bring what you can for our quarterly karma connection partner, and you’ll be helping the women and children of the Guatemala City slums.

HEAL YOUR BACK WITH YOGA
Join Sara Hauber for Heal Your Back with Yoga, October 22, 2:00–4:00 p.m. Sara’s personal and professional experience with back problems will help you learn ways to safely approach yoga to relieve even chronic back pain. $30.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD
Licensed Clinical Social Workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead Yoga to Manage Your Mood, a four-week open series focusing on techniques to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. The class meets Sundays, 6:00–7:30 p.m., starting October 23. $80 for four classes or $25 each.

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS
Lisa Lashuk teaches this open series featuring gentle yoga and guided meditations docused on creating a momentous life. Sunday evenings, 7:00–8:15 p.m., $75 for the six-week session or $15 per class. A large portion of the proceeds go to Safe Passage NC.

YOGA 101
The next session of Yoga 101 with Cheryl Diegel begins November 2 and runs seven weeks. Perfect for your friends who are interested in yoga but don’t know where to start—or for yourself, as a refresher course. Wednesday evenings, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $84.

FREE YOGA FOR BALANCE
Sage Rountree leads our monthly community class as an investigation into balance. Saturday, November 5, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up online or at the desk to reserve your spot.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-10-10T08:21:00.002-04:00

ESPERANZA 5K

Come to Southern Village this Saturday to run or walk the Esperanza 5K in support of Safe Passage NC, our quarterly karma connection. Proceeds benefit the women and children of the Guatemala City slums. Register as part of Team CYCo.! Walk-up registration is at 7:00 a.m., and the race begins at 9:00. Teresa Perez’s noon class on Friday, 10/21, will be by donation to Safe Passage NC, as well.

THE BODY ELECTRIC

Please join us for a special practice with live music Saturday, October 15, 2:00–4:30 p.m. Certified Anusara Yoga Teacher Lila Brown instructs; Mark Dragon loops the music to feed the energy of the fun practice. $40 through Thursday, October 13, $50 at the door.

NEW ANUSARA YOGA CLASSES

Join Sommer Parris-Sobin for Anusara Yoga Express, a fun one-hour class, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00–10:00 a.m. Come align with grace!

LOVE IS PRESENCE

The new session of Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training with Abra Fortune Chernik begins Monday, October 17, 7:15–8:45 p.m. This session’s themes is Transforming Suffering into Freedom and Compassion. $120 prepaid for all six weeks, or drop in for $25 per class.

HEAL YOUR BACK WITH YOGA

We are happy to welcome Sara Hauber for Heal Your Back with Yoga, October 22, 2:00–4:00 p.m. Sara’s personal and professional experience with back problems will help you learn ways to safely approach yoga to relieve even chronic back pain. $30; $25 if paid by 10/15.

YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD

Licensed Clinical Social Workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead Yoga to Manage Your Mood, a four-week open series focusing on techniques to alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety. The class meets Sundays, 6:00–7:30 p.m., starting October 23. $80 for four classes or $25 each.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-10-03T16:25:00.003-04:00

POWER FLOW YOGA BY DONATION
This Friday, 10/7, Teresa Perez’s noon Power Flow Yoga class will be by donation to Safe Passage NC. Bring what you can for our quarterly karma connection partner, and you’ll be helping the women and children of the Guatemala City slums.

KRISTIN COOPER AND THE KUNGA FLOW DRUMMERS
Kristin Cooper is bringing her Kunga Flow Drummers from Wilmington for a fun, powerful weekend of rhythm and flow. Join us for some or all of the practices this weekend including a Friday night chill, 6:30–8:30 p.m., a Saturday morning slow flow, 9:00–11:00 a.m., or a Sunday afternoon warm detox, 3:00–5:00 p.m. $95 for all three, or $40 each.

Please note: to accommodate the drummers’ sound check, Christa Atkinson’s Friday 5:15 Power Flow Yoga class is suspended this week only.

THAI YOGA MASSAGE WORKSHOP
Kristin Cooper is also leading a Thai Yoga Massage workshop on Saturday, 10/8, 3:00–5:00 p.m. Learn partner stretching techniques to increase your flexibility, awareness, and compassion.

NEW ANUSARA YOGA CLASSES
We are delighted to welcome Sommer Parris-Sobin to our schedule. Sommer will be teaching Anusara Yoga Express, a fun one-hour class, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00–10:00 a.m., starting this Thursday. Come align with grace!

THE BODY ELECTRIC
Speaking of Anusara Yoga, join us for a special practice with live music Saturday, October 15, 2:00–4:15 p.m. The inimitable Lila Brown instructs; Mark Dragon loops the music. $40 if you pay by October 8, $50 after.

LOOKING AHEAD
Upcoming offerings include a new session of Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training; Heal Your Back with Yoga; and Yoga to Manage Your Mood. Read more at mycyco.com!

Community Class this Saturday

2011-09-27T07:11:00.000-04:00

It never fails that I forget something when I make the "This Week" list, and this week it's a biggie: Helen Tapper's Community Mindful Flow Yoga Class. This is FREE as Helen's gift to the community, and it runs on Saturday, October 1, 2–4 p.m. Please join us for this lovely experience of moving and moving inward.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-09-26T15:36:00.001-04:00

Find details and registration for all these exciting events on our Workshops page!

MONTHLY KIDS’ YOGA

Our monthly kids’ yoga, appropriate for children ages 3 to 8, meets Sunday, October 2, from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Michele Nettesheim leads this fun practice. Drop your children off, or stay and play.

FREE PREVIEW: YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD

Licensed clinical social workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead our open series on yoga to manage your mood, focusing on techniques to alleviate anxiety and depression. They offer a free preview session Sunday, October 2, 6:00–7:30 p.m. in the Gold Circle Room.

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS

Sunday evenings, Lisa Lashuk leads an open series (drop-ins welcome) focusing on creating a momentous life. Join her for gentle yoga and guided meditations, 7:00–8:30 p.m. $75 for six weeks, or $15 per session.

KRISTIN COOPER AND THE KUNGA FLOW DRUMMERS

Our friend Kristin Cooper is bringing her Kunga Flow Drummers from Wilmington for a fun, powerful weekend of rhythm and flow. Join us for some or all of the practices October 7–9, including a Friday night chill, 6:30–8:30 p.m., a Saturday morning slow flow, 9:00–11:00 a.m., or a Sunday afternoon warm detox, 3:00–5:00 p.m. $95 for all three, or $35 each before 9/30, $40 each after.

THAI YOGA MASSAGE WORKSHOP

Kristin Cooper is also leading a Thai Yoga Massage workshop on Saturday, October 8, 3:00–5:00 p.m. Learn partner stretching techniques to increase your flexibility, awareness, and compassion. $35 before 9/30; $40 after.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-09-18T17:43:00.000-04:00

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS

Sunday evenings, Lisa Lashuk leads an open series (drop-ins welcome) focusing on creating a momentous life. Join her for gentle yoga and guided meditations, 7:00–8:30 p.m. $75 for six weeks, or $15 per session.

FALL YOGA MALA

Join us Saturday, September 24, 2:00–4:00 p.m., for our quarterly yoga mala. Jennie Dickson, Michelle Johnson, Brooks Rainey Pearson, and Rebecca Weiss will lead you in 108 sun salutations (with plenty of room for modifications!). Proceeds will go to Safe Passage NC, our karma connection for the season, to aid needy children in the Guatemala City slums. $25 until 9/23; $30 at the door.

POWER FLOW YOGA FOR SAFE PASSAGE

Sunday, September 25, 1:00–3:30 p.m., Teresa Perez leads a 75-minute Power Flow Yoga class followed by the screening of Manos de Madre, a short film on Safe Passage’s work. Bring a donation in cash or check, or donate online—the link is under Workshops at mycyco.com.

MONTHLY KIDS’ YOGA

Our monthly kids’ yoga, appropriate for children ages 3 to 8, meets Sunday, October 2, from 9:30 to 10:15 a.m. Michele Nettesheim leads this fun practice. Drop your children off, or stay and play.

FREE PREVIEW: YOGA TO MANAGE YOUR MOOD

Licensed clinical social workers Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson lead our open series on yoga to manage your mood, focusing on techniques to alleviate anxiety and depression. They offer a free preview session Sunday, October 2, 6:00–7:30 p.m. in the Gold Circle Room.

What You Do Matters

2011-09-07T15:19:00.001-04:00

By Teresa Perez

As a spiritual seeker in the U.S., I am very aware of the extreme privilege that allows me to be on a spiritual path. Sure, I am a broke graduate student, and I have to manage my money carefully, but I have to manage my money so that I can afford yoga workshops, not food and shelter. Sometimes I get stressed about paying for my 22nd year of schooling, but I never had to worry about funding my education so that I could become literate and numerate.

This is not the reality for the children and families that live around and work in the garbage dump of Guatemala City. It is not an exaggeration when I say that these children and families are the poorest of the poor. Day in and day out, these families pick through the waste land of the dump in search of something to scavenge: maybe some still usable clothes, some scraps that they may be able to sell, or even perhaps some still edible food.

Through the practice of yoga, I have come to realize that though I may never know these people whose lives are so shaped by crippling poverty, their plight is not separate from mine. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We caught in an inescapable web of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

I have also come to realize that I do not have to feel disempowered when faced with the stark images of malnourished children, adolescents high on glue, or mothers forced to pick through others’ waste in order to feed their children. Indeed, yoga has come to teach me that in multiple ways I have the power to change these situations.

There is the somewhat esoteric way of changing these situations by using meditation to channel thoughts of love and positive energy or dedicating my yoga practice to those in desperate situations. Will it put food on their table or teach them how to read? Probably not. But maybe for one second of their day, they don’t feel so alone. Maybe for a fleeting moment they feel empowered.

Then there is the very practical way: working with and supporting organizations such as Safe Passage. Safe Passage has been working with the community that lives around and works in the Guatemala City garbage dump since 1997. Started by Hanley Denning, a UNC student, visionary, and someone who knew that what she did mattered, Safe Passage now provides educational, nutritional, and medical services to the families around the dump. Its programs include schooling for children and literacy training for adults. Safe Passage is, for many of the families, the only way they can move beyond the dump.

Safe Passage is the Karma Connection of the quarter for CYCo., and there are many ways you can become involved, too. Here are some:

Sign up to run, walk, or roll in the Esperanza 5K on October 15, in Southern Village.
Join the Esperanza Challenge: set up a fundraising page on Chapel Hill’s Esperanza 5K’s FirstGiving page and ask 10 people you know to donate $25. CYCo. already has a team you can join, too!
Don’t want to set up FirstGiving page? Donate on my page!
Buy raffle tickets! NC Friends of Safe Passage is raffling of a trip for 2 to Guatemala and an AMAZING handmade quilt. Tickets are available at the CYCo. front desk.
Attend the yoga mala (108 sun salutations) on September 24.
Come to a donations Power Flow Yoga class on September 25 and October 7.
For more information about Safe Passage, please go to www.SafePassageNC.org, or come to the screening the documentary about Safe Passage on September 25, at 2:15 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-09-04T10:41:00.001-04:00

YOGA 101

There are a very few spaces left in Cheryl Diegel’s Yoga 101 workshop, which begins this Wednesday, 9/7, at 7:15 p.m. It’s a fantastic intro to yoga poses, breath work, and mindfulness.

RESTORATIVE BREATH WORK

Saturday, September 10, join Helen Tapper for a lovely Restorative Breathwork workshop. Learn to harness the power of the breath for deep relaxation and balance. 2:00–4:00, $30

MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS

Sunday evenings beginning September 11, Lisa Lashuk leads an open series (drop-ins welcome) focusing on creating a momentous life. Join her for gentle yoga and guided meditations, 7:00–8:30 p.m. $75 for six weeks, or $15 per session.

OPEN HIPS, OPEN HEART

As part of our expanded Anusara Yoga offering, we welcome Sommer and Paul Parris-Sobin for a two-hour all-levels workshop September 17, 2:00–4:00 p.m. Come release your hips and open your heart. $25 before 9/10; $30 after.

PREPARED CHILDBIRTH

Our next round of Prepared Childbirth classes begins Sunday, September 18, 4:00–6:30 p.m. The six-week series costs $135 per couple.

Yoga and Politics

2011-09-02T14:59:00.008-04:00

I'm making a go of it and running for Carrboro Board of Aldermen and I am excited and thrilled. To celebrate this step on the path I'll lead you through a Meet the Candidate Class on Saturday, yes tomorrow, from 2:00-3:30pm. You'll hear all about my platform, you will vision the change you want to see in your community, and you'll get a Michelle for Carrboro Sticker. Some of you might be wondering about whether or not yoga and politics mix. The Board of Aldermen in collaboration with Town Advisory Boards, Town Staff, and the Town Manager are responsible for many things in our community. They decide on development and planning issues, transportation needs including encouragement of bike paths and sidewalks, economic development opportunities, energy efficient programs to encourage residents and businesses to be mindful of our carbon footprint locally and globally, they have a revolving loan fund for small businesses, they support the health of our community through the parks and recreation department, they update us on the health of our environment right down to what amoeba is living in Bolin Creek, and they support community agencies with the out of agency funds. Yoga teaches us that we are all connected and that our actions impact others. So who else to inspire the community than a yoga teacher. As a teacher I get to witness transformation moment to moment, breath to breath, and pose to pose. I want to bring that transformative nature to our community and this is why I want to serve on the board. We can change or we can wait for change to happen. See you on the mat! Sign up at www.mycyco.com for the class. If you want more information about my campaign please visit:

website: http://michelleforcarrboro.com

Facebook: Michelle for Carrboro Board of Aldermen

Twitter: Michelleforboa

Back to Basics

2011-08-29T08:25:00.000-04:00

Courtney Long offers Back to Basics on Saturdays, 4:30–5:45 p.m. Here, he answers students' most common questions about the class.

Q1. What is Back to Basics?
A1. This is a theme-centered class where we explore the details of the poses. Having a theme that is meaningful off the mat (as well as on it) positions the practice as an integral part of our day-to-day living. We learn about the details of the poses so that we can develop the skill to express ourselves both with precision and with ease.
Q2. Is this a class just for beginners?
A2. This is a class suitable for students new to Yoga, as well as for those who already practice and have some experience. Back to Basics is an approach to the practice of Yoga where we continually develop our poses from the foundation through full expression. We also leverage the wisdom of Yogic philosophy as a corequisite to our study of the physical practice.
Q3. Are the poses in this class just the easy ones?
A3. Some of the poses that appear to be easy may be the most challenging ones to the student. For example, Savasana, the resting pose, requires minimal physical effort but may seem impossible to a person who can’t slow down. In Back to Basics we learn a wide variety of poses covering standing and sitting, hip-opening and folding, balancing, and twisting poses in addition to backbends and inversions.
Q4. Why is there a theme in class?
A4. The use of a theme in class helps us interweave experiences in life with practice on the mat. Some of the skills we develop in Yoga—presence, mindfulness, being calm through controlled breathing—are extremely useful in dealing with life’s challenges. Our time on the mat is often a sweet breakaway from our day-to-day, but it’s also a learning laboratory where we build skills that enhance our ability to enjoy life.
Q5. What should the student expect from this class?
A5. This 75-minute class provides plenty of time to settle in and center, warm up, enjoy a meaningful sequence of poses, and assimilate the practice in a final resting pose. The theme is offered to make the class more interesting, and to enable the student to personalize the experience. Above all, most students leave the class feeling a little, if not a lot better than when they arrived.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-08-28T12:35:00.001-04:00

FALL SCHEDULE BEGINS THURSDAY

Our fall schedule begins this Thursday, September 1. Pick up a paper copy at the front desk beginning Thursday, or view the new schedule anytime online at mycyco.com or on our Facebook page, facebook.com/carrboroyoga. Join Cheryl Diegel Thursday at 10:30 a.m. for a free introduction to her new MindfulYoga class at that hour!

MEET THE CANDIDATE YOGA

Michelle Johnson, a candidate for the Carrboro Board of Alderman, offers a free community flow yoga class and discussion of her platform on Saturday, September 3, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up at the desk or onlineto reserve your space.

KIDS’ YOGA SUNDAY

The first Sunday of every month is kids’ yoga day! Join Michele Nettesheim for this fun practice Sunday, September 4, 9:30–10:15 a.m., always only $10. Appropriate for children ages 3 to 8. Drop in or sign up online.

WORK YOUR CORE ON LABOR DAY

We’ll have a holiday schedule in place Labor Day, with Alexandra DeSiato offering a 90-minute core-focused class on Monday, September 5, 2:00–3:30 p.m. for only $15. Come (re)discover your core, the seat of your power! Sign up here.

BREATH WORK and MOMENTOUS MEDITATIONS

The weekend of September 10 and 11 is a big one, with the beginning of our yoga teacher training, Helen Tapper’s Restorative Breathwork workshop, and the start of Lisa Lashuk’s Momentous Meditations series on Sunday evenings. Read all about it at mycyco.com.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-08-23T15:58:00.000-04:00

FREE POWER FLOW YOGA

To celebrate the return of students to school, Jeff Cobb’s Thursday morning Power Flow Yoga is FREE at 9 a.m. this week. Parents, come celebrate the newfound shift in your schedule!

PARTNER YOGA

Alexandra DeSiato and Jeff Cobb lead a fun, accessible adventure in partner yoga on Saturday, August 27, 2:00–4:00 p.m. No need to bring a partner, we’ll switch up! $25; sign up here.

FREE ASHTANGA LED PRIMARY SERIES CLASS

Join Aharona Shackman for this free class, a guided trip through Ashtanga Yoga’s Primary Series. Sunday, August 28, 1:00–2:30 p.m. Sign in online or at the desk to reserve your space, or simply walk in.

MEET THE CANDIDATE YOGA

Michelle Johnson, a candidate for the Carrboro Board of Alderman, offers a free community flow yoga class and discussion of her platform on Saturday, September 3, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up at the desk or online to reserve your space.

WORK YOUR CORE ON LABOR DAY

We’ll have a holiday schedule in place Labor Day, with Alexandra DeSiato offering a 90-minute core-focused class 2:00–3:30 p.m. for only $15. Come (re)discover your core, the seat of your power! Sign up here.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-08-13T16:57:00.000-04:00

SHOW UP FOR LOVE

The new session of our popular meditation and mindfulness class, Love Is Presence, focuses on Transforming Relationships. The program, led by Abra Fortune Chernik, meets Monday evenings, 7:15–8:45 p.m. You can drop in for $25 per session.

PARTNER YOGA

Alexandra DeSiato and Jeff Cobb lead a fun, accessible adventure in partner yoga on Saturday, August 27, 2:00–4:00 p.m. No need to bring a partner, we’ll switch up! $25; early bird $20 if paid by August 21.

FREE ASHTANGA LED PRIMARY SERIES CLASS

Join Aharona Shackman for this free class, a guided trip through Ashtanga Yoga’s Primary Series. Sunday, August 28, 1:00–2:30 p.m. Sign in online or at the desk to reserve your space, or simply walk in.

YOGA 101

Thinking about fall course loads and back-to-school projects? Sign up for Yoga 101, which begins its next session September 7. It’s a perfect introductory course for the people in your life who need yoga—or a chance for you to go over the basics again. Cheryl Diegel leads, Wednesdays, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $74 for the seven-week session.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-08-07T15:21:00.000-04:00

LOVE IS BACK IN TOWN

The new session of our popular meditation and mindfulness class, Love Is Presence, begins this Monday, August 8. This session’s theme is More on Transforming Relationships; you need not have attended the previous session. The $120 series, led by Abra Fortune Chernik, runs for six classes, skipping Labor Day, and meets Monday evenings, 7:15–8:45 p.m. You can drop in for $25 per session.

SECOND FRIDAY ART WALK

Klaus Nettesheim’s photography now graces our walls; check it out now and drop by on Friday, August 12, for the second Friday art walk. We’ll have snacks and good company for you!

PARTNER YOGA

Alexandra DeSiato and Jeff Cobb lead a fun, accessible adventure in partner yoga on Saturday, August 27, 2:00–4:00 p.m. No need to bring a partner, we’ll switch up! $25; early bird $20 if paid by August 21.

FREE ASHTANGA LED PRIMARY SERIES CLASS

Join Aharona Shackman for this free class, a guided trip through Ashtanga Yoga’s Primary Series. Sunday, August 28, 1:00–2:30 p.m. Sign in online or at the desk to reserve your space, or simply walk in.

YOGA 101

Thinking about fall course loads and back-to-school projects? Sign up for Yoga 101, which begins its next session September 7. It’s a perfect introductory course for the people in your life who need yoga—or a chance for you to go over the basics again. Cheryl Diegel leads, Wednesdays, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $74 for the seven-week session.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-08-01T12:55:00.001-04:00

TEACHER TRAINING WRAPS UP

Stephanie Keach and her students are wrapping up the three-week yoga teacher training we have been hosting in the Gold Circle Room. Our Ashtanga Express class with Teresa Perez will be suspended on Friday, August 5, to accommodate the graduation ceremony.

ISOKINETICS ON BREAK

Sarah Reichman’s Stretch and Tone: Isokinetics is taking a summer holiday on Thursday, August 4, but returns at its usual time next Tuesday and Thursday at 4:30 p.m.

YOGA FOR RUNNERS

Sage Rountree leads this hour-long workshop Saturday, August 6, 10:00–11:00 a.m. We’ll look at postrun routines to build your core and hip strength and to increase your hip flexibility. You’ll leave with a handle on some short routines to practice after your runs to make you strong, flexible, and balanced. Only $10.

FREE COMMUNITY FLOW

Michelle Johnson teaches this popular monthly community flow class this Saturday, August 6, 2:00–3:30 p.m. Sign up at the front desk or on the Classes page online to hold your spot.

FREE BACK TO BASICS

Courtney Long's Back to Basics class is also free this Saturday, August 6, 4:30–5:45 p.m. Join him for this fun, illuminating pose workshop!

This Week at CYCo.

2011-07-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

ONE-TIME CLASS SUSPENSIONS

We welcome Stephanie Keach and her students in the three-week yoga teacher training we are hosting in the Gold Circle Room through August 5. Enjoy the extra buzz around the studio!

To accommodate the group, we are suspending Gentle Yoga with Michele Nettesheim on Sunday, July 31, and Ashtanga Express with Teresa Perez at noon on Friday, August 5, just this one time. Thanks for your understanding.

YOGA 101: SUMMER SCHOOL

Cheryl Diegel leads this six-week series on the fundamentals of yoga. This would make a lovely gift for someone intrigued by yoga but unsure about where to start. Wednesdays, July 27–August 31, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $72.

YOGA FOR RUNNERS

Sage Rountree leads this hour-long workshop Saturday, August 6, 10:00–11:00 a.m. We’ll look at postrun routines to build your core and hip strength and to increase your hip flexibility. You’ll leave with a handle on some short routines to practice after your runs to make you strong, flexible, and balanced. Only $10.

FLOW YOGA AND AYURVEDA

Ayurveda is the ancient Indian system for finding balance in your body and life. Join Asheville’s Shala Worsley for a full weekend of flow yoga and Ayurveda, August 12–14. This is perfect for students and teachers alike. Yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour Yoga Alliance registration through Asheville Yoga Center will receive credit.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-07-17T07:13:00.002-04:00

WELCOME, TEACHER TRAINEES!

We welcome Stephanie Keach and her students in the three-week yoga teacher training we are hosting in the Gold Circle Room beginning this Monday. Enjoy the extra buzz around the studio! Jeff Cobb’s Tuesday/Friday 10:30 a.m. Power Flow is suspended during the training.

YOGA 101: SUMMER SCHOOL

Cheryl Diegel leads this six-week series on the fundamentals of yoga. This would make a lovely gift for someone intrigued by yoga but unsure about where to start. Wednesdays, July 27–August 31, 7:15–8:30 p.m., $72.

YOGA FOR RUNNERS

Sage Rountree leads this hour-long workshop Saturday, August 6, 10:00–11:00 a.m. We’ll look at postrun routines to build your core and hip strength and to increase your hip flexibility. You’ll leave with a handle on some short routines to practice after your runs to make you strong, flexible, and balanced. Only $10.

FLOW YOGA AND AYURVEDA

Ayurveda is the ancient Indian system for finding balance in your body and life. Join Asheville’s Shala Worsley for a full weekend of flow yoga and Ayurveda, August 12–14. This is perfect for students and teachers alike. Yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour Yoga Alliance registration through Asheville Yoga Center will receive credit.

This Week at CYCo.

2011-07-10T08:59:00.000-04:00

RESTORATIVE YOGA BY DONATION

Saturday, July 16, 3:00–4:30 p.m., Ann Burrus leads a restorative yoga class by donation for the UNC Lineberger Cancer Center. Come enjoy this lovely practice, perfect for cooling you down and nurturing you. Please preregister at the front desk or online so that we can have the props for everyone to be supported.

FLOW YOGA 101

This week is our last session of Flow Yoga 101, meeting Wednesday, 7:15–8:30 p.m. Join Brooks Rainey Pearson for this class that breaks down the fundamentals of flow. $15.

PREPARED CHILDBIRTH CLASS

Our next round of Prepared Childbirth classes begins this Sunday. Paula Huffman, RN, leads this class to prepare you and your partner for the birth experience. $150 per couple.

FLOW YOGA AND AYURVEDA

Ayurveda is the ancient Indian system for finding balance in your body and life. Join Asheville’s Shala Worsley for a full weekend of flow yoga and Ayurveda, August 12–14. This is perfect for students and teachers alike. Yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour Yoga Alliance registration through Asheville Yoga Center will receive credit.

YOGA TEACHER TRAINING

CYCo.’s yoga teacher training, which begins in September, has only one spot left!

If you are interested in a three-week intensive format, join Stephanie Keach for her training, beginning 7/18 and hosted here.

Details on all of these appear on our workshops page.

Yoga and Ayurveda

2011-07-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

Next month, we'll welcome Asheville's Shala Worsley for a fun weekend of flow yoga and Ayurveda. This ancient system teaches ways to bring the body into balance. Here's the short workshop description:

Join Shala Worsley in this cleansing and tonifying workshop as she integrates the principles of Ayurveda into four themed vinyasa flow yoga classes designed to gently cleanse and balance. According to Ayurveda, our physical constitutions are determined by a unique combination of the three doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. On any given day, due to our innate tendencies or changes in our environment, such as the weather, the ratio of our doshas can become imbalanced. Left unaddressed, this imbalance can initiate the disease process. In this workshop you’ll gain knowledge of each dosha and their particular warning signs of imbalance, while enjoying yoga asana, pranayama, and meditation techniques to soothe and pacify each type. You’ll leave the weekend ready to start this year fresh with a balanced body, clear perspective, and renewed connection to Pure Being.

Our schedule:

Friday, August 12, 5:30–8:30 p.m.: Introduction to Ayurveda plus Yoga Tonification and Vata Pacifying Practice
Saturday, August 13, 8:00–11:00 a.m. Yoga Cleanse and Kapha Pacifying Practice with Yoga Assists
Saturday, August 13, 4:00–7:00 p.m. Ayurvedic Overview, Tri-doshic practice and Marma massage
Sunday, August 14, 12:00–3:00 p.m. Pitta Pacifying Practice with Concentration Techniques (meditation and pranayama)

All levels are welcome, from students to teachers!
$65 each individual session
$250 for entire weekend (full attendance necessary for Asheville Yoga's 500hr YA credit)

For full details and to register, click here.

Yoga To Manage Your Mood

2011-06-12T20:56:00.005-04:00

Have you ever had the experience of going to a yoga class feeling worried, anxious, or with a little case of blues?

Have you ever left a yoga class feeling like your whole perspective on the world transformed?
Has child pose felt like the respite you needed?

Has warrior I ever made you connect to your strength?

Has a back bend helped you connect with your deepest desire?

Have you ever chanted and your heart opened up more than you thought that it could?

Have you ever experienced focusing on just your inhale and exhale?

Well if you answered YES or NO to any of the questions it seems like Yoga to Manage Your Mood might just be the right workshop series for you?

Beth Hayden and Michelle Johnson are offering a four part workshop series focused on Yoga to Manage Your Mood. Through asana, mantra, chanting, visualization, chakra clearing, and meditation we will quiet monkey mind for anxiety and activate your prana for depression. Yoga is powerfully healing and the combination of these tools will definitely change your life and mood. This workshop is all levels and you can come to one class or sign up for all four.

Saturday mornings, June 18–July 9, 10:00–11:30 a.m. Learn techniques to alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety in a warm, supportive environment. Sign up for all four weeks for $80, or drop in for $25 a session.

If you have questions about the workshop contact Michelle Johnson via email- michelle.socialworker@gmail.com

Sign up for Tamal Dodge's Master Class!

2011-05-18T07:01:00.002-04:00

WHAT: Tamal Dodge Master Class

WHEN: Tuesday, 5/24, 6:00–8:30 p.m.

WHERE: CYCo. Paper Lantern Room

COST: $35

WHY: Refresh, expand, and deepen your yoga practice

We are delighted to welcome Tamal Dodge for this class, which will challenge and encourage students of all levels. With an emphasis on alignment and instructions on becoming in tune with your body's needs, this class gives the student practical and useful tools for a life of yoga. After a guided mediation filled with visualizations and relaxation techniques, the student will walk away feeling peaceful, vibrant and healthy.

Tamal has been practicing yoga his whole life. Born and raised in his family’s yoga ashram in Hawaii, he has been teaching for the last 10 years. Tamal founded Yogaco in Santa Monica, one of the largest yoga studios in California. He has produced Kirtan CDs, books, and articles on yoga and meditation as well as toured the world teaching yoga. Tamal has been featured on many television stations, yoga magazines and websites for his dynamic yoga style and spiritual outlook. Tamal has developed a strong following nationwide and internationally. His vigorous vinyasa classes are filled with humor, music, and meditation. His yearly retreats, workshops, and teacher trainings are a way into the life and times of being a modern yogi. Tamal’s goal is to help you be in the world but not of the world, to be truly peaceful and happy.

For more info on Tamal, visit his website at www.tamalyoga.com.

"What the—?"

2011-05-08T10:04:00.000-04:00

I brought my younger daughter, seven-year-old Vivian, to Michelle's community class yesterday. She helped me check in the students ("Take a mat and an eye patch," she directed.) And she set up a mat in the center of the front row.

Being on the mat next to her was an instructive take on how each of us reacts to our first yoga class. Vivi was like a little Id manifest on the mat. As soon as we began, she realized she needed to use the bathroom—so she got up, left, and returned. She looked perplexed by the chanting but tried it out with a shrug. When we moved through a warmup sequence from table and down dog, she whispered, "This is hard! It hurts my hands. Can I take a break?"

In time, she did just that: went into the office, ate a cookie, played a round of Angry Birds, then came back in. (Have you ever daydreamed about doing the same?) She fell out of a number of poses dramatically (it struck me that many of us feel we land that way when we fall). With each unfamiliar pose, she muttered, "What the—?" Someone farted, and she giggled. She was horrified by the "bugs" on her mat, till I pointed out they were just renegade flaxseeds that slipped from her eye pillow ("eye patch"). In short, she acted like a seven-year-old, and one who probably had no business in class.

But then something interesting happened. She laid down on the mat in savasana about 30 minutes early, moving out after a few minutes into some reclining twists, then returning to corpse pose. I've never seen her be still and relaxed for so long without a screen to capture her attention. This is the power of the practice: moving together, or staying still while others move, or being still together, we are able to let go and rest in our true nature.

A Soul Generated by Loving Kindness

2011-04-18T22:29:00.007-04:00

Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

On Saturday April 23rd I will be offering a Loving Kindness, Metta, Meditation and Asana Workshop from 2:00-4:00pm. Metta is a tool that permits one's generosity and kindness to be applied to all beings, and as a consequence, one finds true happiness in another person's happiness, no matter who the individual is. Loving Kindness is an amazing practice of sending love in the form of a wish for safety, health, freedom from harm and danger, and ease to yourself, a loved one, someone who is neutral to you, and someone you are in conflict with. You might ask what metta or loving kindness has to do with service. We can be of better service to ourselves and others if we are connected more fully to love. I bring up service because all proceeds from this workshop will go to the Shaw University Disaster Relief Fund. Shaw is the oldest historically Black University in the South. It along with many other individuals and communities was hit very hard by the tornado this past weekend. I don't have a connection to Shaw University directly. I didn't attend the University nor did anyone in my family. I don't have friends who attended Shaw. I know that people in times like these are often giving to people they don't know because there is suffering that they can see and it is powerful to give in the midst of a disaster. It is equally as powerful to give when we can't see the suffering because suffering is always happening and our gifts can provide some ease. It is powerful to give to folks you don't know or haven't met and we can use this type of generosity all of the time, everywhere, for everyone.

This workshop is designed to intersperse metta meditation into the asana practice. We will end with a soothing, svasana. This will be a wonderful way to awaken your capacity to love more and you will be supporting a great cause.
I hope you will join me.

All levels welcome!

Gratitude

2011-04-12T12:08:00.008-04:00

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
-Kahlil Gibran-

Gratitude is a powerful experience and emotion. It's something that we should fill up with and share freely. In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month I will be giving back to the Orange County Rape Crisis Center. This agency has given so much to me personally and gives continually to the community. Shortly after I moved here to begin graduate school in social work, I was raped and received services from OCRCC. My already wobbly foundation was fractured and the support from friends, loved ones and OCRCC are what allowed me to heal. I share this as a testament to the fact that healing can happen. I am whole, healed, and full of happiness now. I began volunteering with the Rape Crisis Center in 1999 because I was inspired by the volunteers who came to the hospital to support me and continually provided support in my healing process. I was a companion volunteer for many years, later joined the Board of Directors, and eventually became a staff member and served on their staff until 2008. The lessons I learned about my own experience of sexual violence and from my work with the Rape Crisis Center are invaluable and I want to give back!
Starting April 17th for one week I will donate all of the proceeds from teaching yoga to the Orange County Rape Crisis Center.
I'll donate from my class on Sunday April 17th, Wednesday April 20th, and Sunday April 24th.
All you have to do is come roll out your mat. I'll teach and lead you in a transformative practice.
Please help me support a cause I believe in that supports our community and helps break the silence around sexual violence.

Sole Survivors

2011-03-25T14:26:00.000-04:00

Our friends at the Orange County Rape Crisis Center (our quarterly charity partner) are offering a cool new program this spring: Sole Survivors. My training partner Mimi O'Grady will be coaching the group, appropriate for both new and experienced runners, to run a 5K. The workouts will be good, hard work, empowering, and uplifting. Read the flyer for more:

Yoga Towns

2011-03-23T17:13:00.001-04:00

I just sent the following in an e-mail to yogatown@yogajournal.com. If you have a moment, you might draft a message, too. Twitter says they might be interested (thanks, Nicole).

Friends,

Hopefully you truly DO want to hear about great yoga towns, and I'm not bombarding you with my recommendation of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC. (The two are symbiotic, like Minneapolis/St. Paul.) I can speak as a studio co-owner, longtime student, and contributor to Yoga Journal's My Yoga Mentor.

We have an abundance of yoga in the area, with both large and small (and home) studios (including my own Carrboro Yoga Company), and the great thing is that we studio owners are a collegial group, collaborating on events that benefit our community and the world. For example, my studio and Franklin Street Yoga, a Baptiste studio near the UNC campus, will together host a summer yoga mala event to raise money for the Africa Yoga Project, which our shared teacher, Michelle Johnson, will join in January 2012.

In addition to the rich base of teachers practicing in various styles, we have access to nationally touring teachers, many of whom Tracy Bogart, owner of Triangle Yoga, brings through annually.

And we are ensuring the continued success of our community by offering many options to those students interested in teacher training. Among the four established studios in town, there are six teacher trainings underway!

Whether you're just gathering information about good yoga towns or looking to work up a piece, I'm happy to promote our fantastic area and to talk further if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Sage

Embody/Empower

2011-03-17T10:11:00.002-04:00

From Carleen Brown, our friend and frequent sub for Lauren Sacks:

So often my yoga practice shifts through phases that are reflections of the different seasons. Winter brings a shift inward, as I reflect on the growth of the passing year, and the ways in which I can deepen my roots to become stronger for the coming year. Now, as winter is coming to an end, and spring is calling us to open up to the light and warmth of the outdoors, my practice is also beginning to open up to allow my light to shine out in a brighter, yet more grounded way. While trees appear lifeless in winter, they deepen their roots and set the stage for the beautiful blossoms of spring. Likewise, in our lives, the inner work of winter sets the foundation for the playfulness, freedom, and light of spring.

I am excited to tap into my roots and celebrate my own light with Meaghan de Roos and Gil Elhart at Carrboro Yoga Company on April 17 for their workshop Embody-Empower: Cultivating Strength from Within. Meaghan and Gil will skillfully guide us in a yoga practice that will enable us to tap into our own inner strength so that we feel empowered to freely and creatively express our true Selves on our yoga mats and in our lives. These talented teachers promise to connect us to our foundation so that we feel fully
supported as we play with moving into freedom.

Meaghan and Gil come together to offer yoga as a path to self-discovery. They have devoted their lives to the teachings of yoga and embody these teachings in their everyday lives. Their home is Virginia Beach, where they teach full-time. They travel nationally to share yoga with others, including assisting their teacher, Seane Corn. Meaghan is the southeast regional leader for Off The Mat and Into the World, a program that inspires social activism through yoga. I am excited to see these two beautiful people, and dear friends, in Carrboro and hope to also see many of you in the studio for this fun workshop! Happy Spring!

Register for the workshop here.

Yoga of Social Change

2011-03-12T21:14:00.007-05:00

Please check out this weekend retreat that I'll be co-leading with my amazing co-pilot Claudia Horwitz. Several Carrboro Yoga Yogis attended in October and it was a transformative experience.

April 8-10, Yoga of Social Change 

Led by Claudia Horwitz and Michelle Johnson, this retreat is a rich exploration into how yoga deepens our journey of awareness and strengthens our work for collective liberation.

Each day includes asana (postures), meditation, text study, discussion and time for individual reflection. It is accessible for all bodies and experience levels.

Claudia is the director of stone circles and The Stone House and a Kripalu yoga teacher. Michelle is a licensed social worker, dismantling racism trainer and a vinyasa yoga teacher.

The retreat begins at 5:00 on Friday, April 8th (with an optional day of practice from 12:00-5:00pm that day) and ends with lunch on Sunday, April 10th. Sliding scale fee of $175-350 covers meals, housing and materials; scholarships are available. In keeping with tradition, participants will have the opportunity to offer "dana" or generosity for the teachings at the end of the retreat.

For more information and a registration form visit http://stonecircles.org/node/177 Questions? Talk to Michelle Johnson next time you visit Carrboro Yoga Company or Email info@stonecircles.org

Love Is Presence: March/April

2011-03-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

The next session of Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training begins Monday, March 21. Classes run every Monday, 7:15–8:45 p.m., and you can do the six-week session for $120 or drop in for $25 per class.

Entitled "Freeing Ourselves from the Prison of the Untrained Mind," the series will focus on the one addiction the Buddha identified as the most insidious of all: discursive, obsessive thought. Together we will explore how to use our practice to wake up from the trance of conditioned thinking and return home to presence.

Sign up here or at the front desk. We look forward to including you in this popular series.

Viver Ayurveda

2011-03-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Our friends at Stone and Spa are hosting this workshop on Ayurveda in April. They do beautiful work—check it out! http://www.stoneandspa.com/ayurveda.htm

Karma Connection

2011-03-04T16:25:00.005-05:00

It's March and the trees are blooming, and Spring is starting to shine through offering us more light. Carrboro Yoga is shining it's light on this quarters Karma Connection, Orange County Rape Crisis Center, OCRCC. The Orange County Rape Crisis Center works to stop sexual violence and its impact through support, education and advocacy. As a long time volunteer at OCRCC and a former staff member I can affirm that this organization is doing outstanding work in the community and has helped countless survivors of sexual violence. There are lots of ways you can support this Karma Connection by doing what you already do-come to yoga.
CYCO is offering several workshops, donation classes, and events focused on supporting this important organization.

Ways you can support just by coming to CYCO for a yoga class or workshop:
3/19 Yoga Mala with Michelle, Brooks, Jennie, and Amanda
Portion of Proceeds will benefit the Orange County Rape Crisis Center

4/16 Core Empower: A Donation Class for OCRCC with Alexandra DeSiato

4/30 Hips and Shoulders: A Donation Class for OCRCC with Brooks Rainey-Pearson

The week of 4/17 Michelle Johnson will donate all of her earnings from classes to OCRCC. You have three opportunities to show up, bring friends to yoga and know that the money you are spending on yoga is going to OCRCC.
4/17 4:30-5:45pm
4/19 6:00-7:15pm
4/20 12:00-1:00pm

Please join us in supporting all of the work the Orange County Rape Crisis Center does to break the silence and support so many impacted by sexual violence.

Sign up for all of these events: www.mycyco.com

We will see you on the mat!

For more information about Sexual Assault Awareness Month Events sponsored by OCRCC visit:
www.ocrcc.org

Leslie Kaminoff at Triangle Yoga

2011-02-21T15:36:00.000-05:00

If you're in town this coming weekend (February 25–27), you should run, not walk, to sign up for Leslie Kaminoff's workshop at Triangle Yoga. You know Leslie as the author of Yoga Anatomy, and if you're like me, you know the book because of its beautiful, useful illustrations of what happens inside classic yoga poses. You may not have yet had the pleasure of reading the first part of the book, fully based in physiology, which lays out an insightful and practical approach to how energy moves in the body.

Having studied this material with Leslie both in the weekend workshop and in expanded form in his online Yoga Anatomy course, I can promise it will blow and expand your mind. In fact, I'd offer you a money-back guarantee if I could! Instead, I happily direct you to our friends and colleagues at Triangle Yoga with my sincere endorsement and hopes that these teachings will enhance your understanding of yoga and your body. Call them at 919-933-9642 to register.

Deepen Your Understanding of Yoga

2011-02-10T11:11:00.000-05:00

Have you ever felt that your yoga practice was limited to the physical? Have you wondered about the greater context of what you do on the mat? Have you tried to study the Yoga Sutras and found yourself adrift, confused by the ancient language? We have the workshop for you!

Michael Johnson, a certified Jivamukti Yoga teacher and longtime student of the Yoga Sutras, will be joining us for a workshop on meditation, yoga, and philosophy. Over the course of the three-day event, he will lead us in practice and discussion, demystifying the ancient text and making it accessible to everyone. You'll leave with a new perspective on your asana practice and your life.

While the weekend includes credits toward Yoga Alliance recertification and toward Asheville Yoga Center's 500-hour yoga teacher training, it's not only for teachers. Any student of yoga interested in expanding their practice is welcome. You may also choose to join for lectures only—a nice option if you have a condition that limits your physical practice.

Read the full course description below, and register by contacting Asheville Yoga Center.

In this course we will review the Yoga Sutra written by Sri Patanjali around 200 AD. This classical text serves as the philosophical basis for all yoga traditions. In this short text, Sri Patanjali goes through the path to enlightenment in three different ways including: the five paths of meditation, the eight limbs, and the four higher truths.

We will review all four chapters, integrate them into a modern yoga and meditation practice, and demonstrate how you can teach them in your yoga classes.

Friday, March 11, 2011, 6:30–9:30 p.m.
*6:30–7:30 p.m.: Yin yoga and meditation
*7:30–9:30 p.m.: Samadhi Pada

Saturday, March 12, 2011, 8:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., 3:00–5:00 p.m. and 7:00–9:00 p.m.
*8:30–10:00 a.m.: Jivamukti yoga and meditation
*10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Sadhana Pada
*3:00–5:00 p.m.: Vibhuti Pada
*7:00–9:00 p.m.: Kaivalya Pada and Yoga Nidra

Sunday, March 13, 2011, 12:00–4:00 p.m.
*12:00–1:30 p.m.: Ashtanga yoga and meditation
*1:30–4:00 p.m.: Yoga Sutra review

$255 for all three days with yoga; $205 for all three days, lecture only; $50 drop-in per session. Contact Asheville Yoga Center to register.

Transitions Workshop This Saturday

2011-02-09T07:05:00.001-05:00

From Brooks Rainey Pearson:

My life recently went through a great transition. I moved into a new house in a new town to be closer to a new job. It was exciting. It was what I had been working toward. It was the apex of my great going-back-to-school adventure. And it was . . . unsettling. As it turns out, I am a vinyasa instructor who is resistant to transition. I like the security of belonging somewhere . . . of having landed.

My fellow yoga instructors and I often define "vinyasa" to mean "flow" or "without obstruction." The Sanskrit tells a slightly different story. Nyasa denotes "to place" and vi denotes "in a special way." In vinyasa we move out of one posture and place ourselves (in a special way!) in the next posture. When we are in between postures we are without an anchor. We are unsettled.

This coming Saturday, February 12, from 2:00 to 4:00, I will embrace the vulnerability of the in between, and I hope that you will join me. We will practice transitioning smoothly between postures, breaking down when and where each body part moves with emphasis on landing (or falling) safely. We will explore classic Ashtanga transitions—jumping forward, jumping back, jumping through—as well as fun new ways to link one posture to another. We will float. We will soar. We will land, catlike, with soft knees and a smile on our face. Or we will fall, and that will be okay, too. The approach will be lighthearted and fun, with ample opportunity to ask questions.

Through teaching vinyasa-style yoga classes, I have learned that transitioning between postures is as integral to the practice as the postures themselves. In this great adventure of being an adult, so too am I learning to surrender to the insecurity of transition so that I can focus on placing myself, in a special way, where I belong.

Register here.

Back to Its Natural State

2011-01-28T15:19:00.002-05:00

I had my hair blown out today, for fun and because I had the time after my semiannual haircut. It's been two years or so since I've seen it straight. The children were alarmed. "You look like a mom," I thought Vivi said, but she explained, "No, you look like your mom." (A not unhappy fate growing closer every day.)

The lovely apprentice stylist who did the blowout asked if I got them often. No, no, but I used to dry my hair straight, then put it on hot rollers, to achieve a look very similar to my natural curls. And when I dyed my hair in my twenties, I was always describing a color that we could never quite match—until I stopped dyeing it and realized it'd been there all along.

What lengths we go to working to get back to our natural state. In yoga, we call the state moksha, freedom, liberation. Which of your rituals and habits are layered one over the other trying to take you back to your self? What if you removed them and just rested in that place to begin with?

Yoga 201: Partner Yoga

2011-01-27T16:03:00.000-05:00

My students have heard this story a million times, but here's a million and one: I hated my first yoga class. It wasn't the teacher, who is lovely, it was me. I found the poses so much harder than I expected, and I was dismayed at my lack of ability. Further, I was confused by the protocol and the Sanskrit, and too shy to take a bathroom break, which led to a very unrelaxing corpse pose.

But knowing that such a strong reaction deserved further exploration, I went back the next week. There was a substitute, and worse: there was partner yoga. Yikes! I had to touch the feet of some woman I'd just met? I left horrified and didn't return to yoga until my first pregnancy. Serendipitously, the teacher was that same substitute from back in the day—she's lovely, too!—and we once again did partner yoga. Ahhh! Someone was touching my swollen feet! Perspective is everything. Now partner yoga is one of my favorite things.

For those who've come around to partner yoga—and for those ready to be persuaded—we offer you Yoga 201: Partner Yoga with Lauren Sacks and Carleen Brown this Saturday, January 29, 2–4 p.m. Click here to register ($20 through Friday), or just show up on Saturday ($25 at the door). In best ballroom dance fashion, we will provide you with a partner if you don't bring one. We may even trade off! See you there!

Yoga and Surfing

2011-01-18T10:10:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed teaching at Wilmington Yoga Center this past weekend, and spending two nights in a Wrightsville Beach cottage with an avid surfer. He, my assistant, and I had a great discussion about wave physics and surf culture, as well as the intersections between surfing and yoga. For those of you with warm destinations in your future, here's a lovely piece on the topic by Morag Sewell, head instructor for my friends at Las Olas Surf Safaris for Women. —Sage

Let Yoga and Surfing Take You Deeper into Your Practices and Your Life
by Morag Sewell

Are You a Snorkeler or a Deep Sea Diver?

Have you ever felt like the stars are aligned? That rainbows are forming arcs over your head? That angels are flying and life is full of magic and endless possibilities?

We have all experienced moments where everything in life seems to be going our way.

The sky is blue, the birds sing sweet songs, and the sun seems to be shining just for us.

Sadly, I assume that there are a larger number of people who have trouble accessing this place of harmony and wonder, but who desperately desire the experience. Thankfully, I believe that everyone can develop their own method of accessing this place of bliss. Allow me to share mine:

The journey for me involves a combination of yoga and surfing. It amazes me that my practice and dedication to both have brought me exactly where I want to be, at every given moment of my life.

Why yoga and surfing? The answer is focus, strength, and balance.

In the water, on the yoga mat, and in every aspect of my life, I have found that the more I practice these attributes, the more accessible this place of rainbows and angels becomes. Someone once told me a funny analogy about the three types of humans in the world. There are snorkelers, those who stay at the surface at all times, and then there are snorkelers who occasionally pop down for a closer inspection of something very beautiful, but don’t stray too far from the top. Finally, there are scuba divers who aren’t afraid to go deep and explore the vast world below and around them. Whether you are a snorkeler or a free-spirited diver, a small taste of yoga or surfing, or a combination of the two, will surely help you go deeper into your practice and into your life.

Some of us have a family, a seventy-hour work week, and not enough time to dedicate to either, but if the desire is there, then you are on the right track and the possibilities are endless. All it takes are a few simple changes:

Upon Awakening

Dedicate the first ten minutes of your morning to a simple sun salutation practice. Get the stale blood flowing, breathe fresh oxygen into sleepy tight muscles, and give yourself the gift of practice and peace. If you are landlocked, but fantasize every day about water and the possibility of playing in the waves, how about an all girls surf flick playing in the background? Try Dear & Yonder, with our favorite surf star, Ashley Lloyd, while you practice to keep that intention and desire.

Stretch and Breathe to Enhance Your Oneness with the Waves

For those who already surf but are looking for more balance in your surfing, yoga works wonders. If your surfing has started to plateau and you are anxious to revisit that place when you felt like you were improving every single session, then yoga could be your answer. Again, strength, focus, and balance will prevail and begin to lead the charge. Ask a few of surfing’s gurus: Kelly Slater, Laird Hamilton, and Gerry Lopez, and without a doubt they will attribute some amount of their successes to a strong yoga practice. Here is a simple sequence that, combined with your time in the water, will surely kick things up a notch. Try incorporating this before or after your surf:

Sun salutations
Eagle pose
Dancer pose
Camel pose
Dhanurasana
Upward Facing Bow
Core

For the surface snorkelers out there, if this sounds like a far off world, a place you have only gone in your starry dreams, I recommend taking a dive down deep to the scuba diver in you. Come and visit me in Mexico and experience the magic of these practices firsthand.

Together, surfing and yoga make a nourishing combination for body and soul. Yoga is grounding and strengthening, and warm water surfing is sweet.

You’ll feel balanced and go to depths you’ve never been before.

The sun will seem to be shining just for you.

Morag is the head surf instructor and yoga teacher (certified in Hatha at the 200 hour level) at Las Olas. She is an outdoor sports enthusiast and loves to pass on her passion for living in everything she does.

“In truth, it matters less what we do in practice than how we do it and why we do it. The same posture, the same sequence, the same meditation with a different intention takes on an entirely new meaning and will have entirely different outcomes.”

—Donna Farhi

Yoga for Athletes ≠ Athletic Yoga

2011-01-17T12:35:00.002-05:00

A central paradox of my work is the name of what I do: teaching yoga for athletes. It's really just yoga, presented in ways that complement what athletes do, and that also work for most folks with tight hips and shoulders (read: Westerners). It's not, as the name might imply, athletic yoga. Athletes get their workouts in, well, their workouts, so their needs from a studio class differ. My experience as a coach and athlete myself certainly informs my teaching, but ultimately, it's yoga.

One of our good, long-term students came in to my class last week for the first time, and I was happy to read her take on the class. Like many people, she'd been avoiding it out of an expectation that it would be a tough, athletic practice, and because she hesitated to self-identify as an athlete. If that sounds like you, never fear. I invite you to join me: Mondays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 5:45 p.m. If you aren't nearby, stream a class on YogaVibes.

Be Fearless and Free

2011-01-12T21:47:00.002-05:00

It's a new year, we're approaching MLK day and it's time to be fearless and be free.
We need to free our minds from our old stories that keep us from doing what we can do, and we need to let go of our fear to find out what is possible.
What better way to do that then to come to the arm balance and inversion workshop at Carrboro Yoga Company this Saturday.
You need support to be free and fearless and Brooks Rainey Pearson and I will be there to guide your journey and support you in flying. We'll break down it all down in a safe and fun environment. We'll start with some flow vinyasa yoga to warm us up and then lead you in a wide range of inversions and arm balances by building on basic techniques and allowing liberal use of props and the wall. We will help you understand how to lift, where to press, and when to shift your weight and what muscles to engage to move safely into and over a dozen postures including crow, side plank, forearm stand, handstand, and many others. This workshop is for beginners and experienced practitioners alike. The goal is to find strength in each pose and to find your edge. You don't have to have a perfect pose you just need to figure out what you want your relationship to be with yourself in the pose. Practice makes practice-not perfect. Expect detailed instruction and lots of laughing from your silly teachers.
Saturday January 15th 2:00-4:00pm $20 if you register before hand and $25 the day of.
Hope to see you there!

Sociology PhD Candidate Needs Subjects

2011-01-12T14:25:00.000-05:00

Want to be Interviewed for a Research Study?

I am currently recruiting men...

What for?

Hello, my name is Joslyn Brenton. I am a Doctoral student in the Sociology department at NC State University. I am currently conducting research about men’s use of alternative (or holistic) medicine, therapies, and practices. If you are a male, who regularly uses/does two or more of the following, then you may qualify to be a part of my study:

Here are some examples:

Acupressure

Acupuncture

Aroma therapy

Ayurvedic

Chinese

Chiropractic

Craniosacral therapy

Fasting/Cleansing

Folk

Homeopathy

Hypnosis

Massage therapy

Medicine

Meditation

Naturopathy

Qi Gong

Rolfing

Tai Chi

Yoga

If the medicines/therapies/practices you use are not on this list, you still qualify for the study. I simply provided an abbreviated list due to space constraints.

What do I have to do? I am conducting interviews, which last 1-2 hours. The interviews are anonymous and confidential.

What would we talk about? The interviews are like a casual conversation. I am mainly interested in asking you how you began to use the alternative/holistic medicines, therapies and/or practices that you use (past and present).

Where? I prefer to conduct the interviews in a quiet location, such as a study room in a public library, or your home. I am open to your suggestions if you know of any other locations.

If you are interested in participating, or would like to ask some questions about my research, please contact Joslyn Brenton: jjbrento@ncsu.edu or call (202) 841-0844.

Thoughts on Cancelations

2011-01-10T20:21:00.002-05:00

I spent the first ten years of my life in Buffalo, New York. These years included the Blizzard of '77, which buried our AMC Pacer so much that not even a hump of the car was visible in the snow. While these years calibrated my snow tolerance meter, I was not old enough to be driving during them and don't feel especially comfortable on the road in wintry conditions.

My Monday evening routine is so ingrained that with the prospect of wintry conditions this afternoon, I drove to Carrboro after walking the girls to school so that I would have our usual supply of Weaver Street Market bread for dinner tonight even if I couldn't make it to the studio for class tonight. So by 4:30, with the roads still dry, I planned to head in to teach tonight, and posted my class plan to Twitter. At 5:30, I headed out, but before I even made it out of the neighborhood, I had second thoughts. Despite the brine on the roads, Highway 54 was showing signs of snow accumulation in the gutter. I called home and had Wes cancel my class; I called Lies and had her tell Alexandra to cancel Pilates. By the time I got to the studio, the Carr Mill lot was covered in snow. I went up to find a few students waiting.

As the rest of class filed in, I apologized and sent them all away with a free class pass. Anyone serious enough to show up for yoga in the snow deserves a treat! As I explained to them, with conditions worsening, I didn't want to get them relaxed, inhibit their reflexes and reaction time, then send them into the wintry mix with other drivers who may not have learned to drive in conditions like those I grew up in. The decision I made as studio owner had to trump the one I made as teacher. Driving home, with the roads growing covered and traffic sporadic, I felt confident in my decision.

When you're frustrated at the cancelations—especially if you are from colder climes—remember that precautions often seem silly until something bad happens. We can't call it a Black Swan when predictions are for bad weather. Best remember the very first yama, the first principle of yoga philosophy: nonharming.

Get your mornings started with yoga!

2011-01-10T10:23:00.004-05:00

If you haven't already noticed the addition of new classes to the schedule, CYCo is now offering a wide array of early morning classes. Check out the new schedule to see days/times. Coming to a morning yoga class is a great way to get your day started.

Below are the morning classes. All classes marked with * will be free during the week of January 24–28!

Mondays

7:00–8:15 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga: Your Intentional Week* (w/Ali Hinks)
8:30–9:30 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga* (w/Patricia Mendizabal)

Tuesdays

7:45–8:45 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga* (w/Dawn Carr)
9:15–10:30 a.m.: Flow Yoga* (w/Lies Sapp)

Wednesdays

8:30–9:30 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga* (w/Patricia Mendizabal)
10:30–11:30 a.m.: Gentle Yoga* (w/Ann Burrus)

Thursdays

7:45–8:45 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga* (w/Dawn Carr)
9:15–10:30 a.m.: Flow Yoga (w/Lies Sapp)

Fridays

7:45–8:45 a.m.: Yoga* (w/Lauren Sacks)
9:15–10:30 a.m.: Power Flow Yoga: Kunga Vinyasa* (w/Sarah Edwards)

Looking forward to seeing you bright and early!

Core Strength for Athletes and Everyone

2011-01-09T15:56:00.000-05:00

What a nice group joined me yesterday for a core-strength workshop! This was the sampler for our new Yoga 201 series, which runs Saturdays, 2–4 p.m., through February and takes you into special topics in yoga. See the full schedule and sign up at our Workshops page.

Our theme was finding mountain pose, the neutral and stable alignment of the pelvis and the spine, and holding that even as our arms and legs were moving and our orientation to gravity shifted. As I promised the students, I'm posting the sequence here.

Warmup: Finding mountain pose, using the glutes

Mountain pose
Dynamic tips into and out of Warrior III
Prancing pony (lifted leg, knee bent) to arrow lunge (diagonal spine) to balancing high lunge to side stretch in lunge to Warrior III. This is, in part, demonstrated in my column for Runner's World this month and its accompanying video. It will also soon be posted at YogaVibes in its entirety. The sequence is a fantastic pre-run dynamic warmup.

Balance/core: Table Core Flow in The Athlete's Pocket Guide to Yoga, also in the Quick Fix podcast

Bird dog
Cross bow (hand to opposite-side foot)
Side plank on knee
Half moon on knee
Side bow (bound half moon on knee, hand to same-side foot)

Core: Triple plank series, alternating three trips to plank with three complementary stretches

Arrowhead plank (on forearms)/half bow
Arrowhead plank, marching feet/half bow, other side
Arrowhead plank to dolphin pose, flowing with the breath; full bow
Side plank on elbow/mermaid stretch
Side plank on elbow, lifting top leg and lowering it with the breath/bharadvajasana
Lifting both legs while lying on side/hip flexor stretch from Z legs (students, do you have a name?)
Repeat side planks on other side
Reverse table/easy cross-legged fold
Reverse plank/easy cross-legged fold, other leg in front
Reverse table or plank, marching legs/seated forward fold
Boat pose/bridge
Boat pose with twist/wheel
Boat pose to half boat ("lower something"), flowing with the breath/bridge or wheel with leg lifts

Closing

Cross-legged reclining twist
Happy baby/shoulderstand
Corpse

We get tastes of these moves in my ongoing drop-in classes, Mondays at 6 p.m. and Thursdays at 5:45 p.m. Join me when you are in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, NC, or come along for a workshop!

Mopping the Floors

2011-01-06T15:23:00.003-05:00

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I arrive at the studio midday to sign in and enjoy Ruth's noon Power Flow class. One of my first chores, and my most favorite, is cleaning the floor. I slowly push the wide dust mop back and forth over the century-old wood. When nails are lifted out, they snag a piece of lint. After the twenty or more slow passes, I come through again, this time with a hammer, to remove the lint and realign the nails. Beyond any analogies about taking an overview and addressing the rough edges, it is a contemplative, centering way to begin my time in that space, and a real highlight of my move from teacher to studio co-owner.

Living Intentionally Group

2010-12-28T14:39:00.002-05:00

Mandy Murphy sends this description of her Living Intentionally Group. What a fantastic way to move into 2011! —Sage

Replace your New Year’s Resolution with a lasting commitment to live with more intention!

What does it mean to live with intention? What are my intentions? How do I know if I am living out my intentions daily? Weekly? Yearly? How do I take the abstract concept of living with intention and make it real—day in, day out?

Are you constantly reacting to whatever life throws your way? Do you take time to reflect on how you spend your time, energy, and money on a regular basis? Do you know what feeds your soul and regularly prepares you for giving out fully from your strong, healthy inner self? Are you tired of running on the hamster treadmill of life?

Chances are, if you are whizzing through life and feeling uneasy or unfulfilled, it could be helpful for you to explore living with more intention. Another way to phrase this is living out a life that is meaningful and thoughtful for you. Living with intention is a different way of living. Peace and fulfillment increase when you develop skills and tools for living intentionally.

Living intentionally means learning to pause throughout the days and to have enough perspective to recognize your choices for what to say, what to do next, and how to spend your money. It means understanding that some choices are better aligned with what you really care about and what is right for you and those you love. It means feeling that icky feeling when you make a choice that isn’t aligned with your purpose and learning that maybe next time, you could make a different choice.

Living intentionally also involves challenging yourself to make some changes or try some things differently. Do you know of some change that you want to make in your life or something new that you want to try but for various reasons just never do it? Part of living with more intention will mean pausing to evaluate these things and then taking action—small steps at a time—to come more into alignment with what is purposeful for you.

There is lots to explore, and that is exactly what the Living Intentionally Group is designed to do. We will create a space to pause, reflect on, and act on living with more intention in a small group setting at a deal of a price!

Join us! We'll meet five Wednesdays, 9:30–11:00 a.m.: January 19, February 2 & 16, March 2 & 16; $85 per person for 5 sessions. Space is limited to 12 participants. Register Here.

For more information, please contact Mandy Murphy at mandy@mindsightcoaching.com or 919.616.6158.

Leaning into 2011 with Loving Kindness

2010-12-27T12:14:00.004-05:00

May all beings be safe.
May all beings be happy and healthy.
May all beings be free and live with ease.

We're moving away from December and into January. We are saying goodbye to 2010 and hello to 2011. This is a time of year where people often look at what they want to leave in the previous year and enter into during the upcoming year. This can be a time of resolutions, cleaning out what we don't want or need, letting go, looking forward, and connecting with how we truly want to live into 2011. I want to enter into 2011 looking at ways I can be more loving and kind to myself, friends, family, folks I don't know very well, and people I am in conflict with. What would our world be like it we were more loving and kind? What would happen if we led with our heart?

I will be holding a workshop focused on loving kindness, or metta meditation, accompanied with an all levels flow yoga practice this Friday December 31st from 12:00-2:00pm. Metta signifies friendship and nonviolence as well as "a strong wish for happiness of others." Metta is a tool that permits one's generosity and kindness to be applied to all beings, and as a consequence, one finds true happiness in another person's happiness, no matter who the individual is. In this workshop we will practice metta meditation and yoga postures specific to deepening our ability to love more. This is a wonderful way to leave 2010 and ease into 2011. We will begin by grounding, centering, move onto cultivating compassion for ourselves, our friends and family, people that are neutral to us, and lastly we'll focus on people who we are in conflict with or who we find to be challenging. We will end with a warm, soothing, svasana. This will be a wonderful way to awaken your capacity to love more and more.
I hope you will join me and Happy New Year!

Om for the Holidays: Practice Notes

2010-12-24T17:41:00.002-05:00

We had a lovely group of yogis and yoginis join us for an all-levels, all-ages holiday practice today. In honor of the season, we enjoyed tree pose in a number of orientations: on our backs, standing, on our sides, and on our bellies. Here's the practice, with links to some resources of mine that might help refresh your memory or inspire you to try new things.

Opening:

Corpse

Warm-Up: Six moves of the Spine, Supine, in The Athlete's Pocket Guide to Yoga [APGY]

Knees to chest
One knee to chest, stir the thigh in the pelvis
Tree pose, supine
Single leg crossover twist, shoulder circles

Balance Work

Rolling like a ball, with variations
Chair, tree, twisting chair, tree, twisting chair (Tree and Chair in APGY)
Toe squat, twisting toe squat (side crow option), standing forward fold

Vinyasa: Lunge Series in APGY, and some of the Lunge Series podcast

High lunge
Low lunge
Lizard lunge
Tripod twist
Pigeon fold (side bend and twist options)
Pigeon backbend
Flipped dog or side bow (as in the Table Core Flow in APGY and the Quick Fix podcast)
Tree in side plank
Runner's lunge/splits

All with variations between (more in this blog post on the options and this one with a video)

Hip Openers: Reclining Twists podcast and in APGY

Reclining half Lord of the Fishes
Reclining cow-face
Reclining twists with eagle-pose legs, both sides

Finishing:

Bridge or wheel
Inversions
Corpse

If you're interested in learning more about sequencing and deepening your practice, consider joining me for our Carrboro Yoga Teacher Training program, which begins in September 2011. The application will be online in the new year.

My music was wonky, so I never got to share Martin Sexton's "O Christmas Tree," which I'd planned to slip in as we settled down for our final corpse pose. You can find it on iTunes.

From all of us at CYCo. best wishes for a bright, joyful holiday season and for peace on earth, within and without.

Beautiful Sunny Morning Between Classes

2010-12-23T13:37:00.007-05:00

The cold winter sunlight

The smooth wood floor

The muses caught in stillness

Yet moving for sure ;)

Michelle, just what I needed!

2010-12-21T20:08:00.006-05:00

December 21 is a bit of an anti-holiday for my father and me.

It is the shortest day of the year; therefore sucky. BUT, everyday after will get longer and longer; therefore awesome. We always call each other and congratulate each other on making it through the worst or the year.

And man, I needed SOMETHING on this December 21. Yeesh, I feel like I've been walking through molasses.

Michelle's class: perfect. The evening classes are so beautiful at the studio. The paper lanterns gave off this warm yellow glow, and the muses in the paintings above us reminded me stained glass windows in a church.

I felt so safe to take care of myself and go to child's pose and safe to come back to Michelle's flow. She had us do some adventurous stuff, but I never felt pushed and only felt loved and encouraged.

Thank you Michelle. What a wonderful way to survive the "anti-holiday."

Michelle, Amanda, Ali

(Also, Mercury is in retrograde THIS WHOLE MONTH?? Really?? ;)

Om for the Holidays

2010-12-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

If you're in town for the holiday weekend, please join us for an all-levels, all-ages class on Friday, December 24, 2:00–3:30 p.m. We'll enjoy some joyful movement and some relaxing hip openers as we prepare to settle in to a brilliant, silent night. Bring your requests, as well! You can sign in here or simply show up.

Mellow Mala

2010-12-20T10:10:00.001-05:00

Our Yoga Mala this Saturday was a great success. We raised funds for the Africa Yoga Project as a light snow fell. If you were intimidated by the idea of performing 108 sun salutations, consider the Mellow Mala on Wednesday night. Details are below, in our beautiful new flyer template! You can sign up here.

Frank Jude Boccio at Hillsborough Yoga

2010-12-19T15:21:00.001-05:00

Our friends at Hillsborough Yoga are hosting Frank Jude Boccio in March for a weekend on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. Frank Jude works at the intersections of mindfulness and yoga and is a well respected teacher. He is the author of Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body, and Mind. We're lucky to have him visiting our area! Read more and sign up here. If you sign up before the first of the year, you'll get the early bird discount.

Spotlight on Sarah Reichman

2010-12-13T15:36:00.000-05:00

Spotlight on Sarah Reichman, who teaches Stretch and Tone: Isokinetics on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. In this Q&A, Sarah explains her approach.

Describe your class for us.

Stretch and Tone: Isokinetics is designed to include three target areas of fitness: strength, flexibility, and stress reduction. Isokinetic motion is constant, controlled motion within a small range. Isokinetic skeletal muscle conditioning promotes muscle strength, endurance and muscle flexibility. When skeletal muscles are strengthened, they accept loads on the body that would otherwise be borne by joints, tendons, or ligaments, and the body becomes less likely to become injured in other activities and in the course of life.

The class is 50–55 minutes. It begins with a short warm-up and concludes with a longer cool-down comprised of a series of slow, elongated stretches. In between, each major muscle group is strengthened and stretched in 8–10 minute intervals.

The Isokinetic conditioning program emphasizes two components of the exercises: correct positioning of the body during each exercise, and correct and regular breathing throughout each exercise and stretch.

What can a student expect to feel as he or she leaves your class?

Challenged, energized, and relaxed.

You use fun music in your class. How do you choose it?

I work every Monday from noon to 2:00 p.m. at WXDU, Duke’s award-winning college radio station. I have access to an amazing variety of music that allows me to assemble eclectic exercise CDs that mix everything from Amandou & Marium—music from Mali—to Belle and Sebastian. I chose music that is fun, funky, energetic, and then relaxing.

Tell us about your day job.

I work for a catering company as wine director, beverage manager, and operations manager. There’s lots of juggling during my day! In the past, I have been a cabinet maker, a waitress, a cook, and a welder, so I need an exercise regimen that takes into account all the stress these activities have put on my body.

You're busy advocating for animal rights. What drew you to this area, and where is your service focused?

I like to say I work with animal “welfare” organizations. I can’t really say why I am so passionate about advocating for animals, I just am. And I am very proud to be involved with fundraising for Independent Animal Rescue and the Coalition to Unchain Dogs. I am the chair of the Annual Have a Heart Wine Tasting Silent Auction for IAR and help organize the Annual Music for Fences Concert for the Coalition.

See inside Sarah's class:

Global Yoga and Mala Benefit

2010-12-10T15:22:00.004-05:00

“Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.”
-Karen Ravn-

When I heard about the Africa Yoga Project http://web.mac.com/paigeelenson/Africa_Yoga_Project/Vision.html I was blown away at the impact yoga is having on people's lives in Kenya. The Africa Yoga Project uses the transformative power of yoga to empower communities and change lives. By inspiring the global yoga community into active service, AYP delivers effective and innovative programs that foster peace, improve physical, emotion and mental well-being, facilitate self-sufficiency and create opportunities to learn and contribute across the communities of East Africa.
I'm always looking for ways to impact people's lives through yoga and I love combining my social work with yoga. One thing led to another as it often does and I will be traveling to Kenya in a year for the Africa Yoga Project as am ambassador. I will be working with teenage girls providing education about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as many of the have experienced trauma and teaching them yoga, meditation, and mindfulness skills. I am very excited and know that this experience will crack everything open and change me forever.
To get to Kenya I need to raise $5000 for the program all of which goes directly to the program to sustain it's vision and work. I pay for my travel and other expenses to get to Kenya.

Carrboro Yoga Company has graciously agreed to have this Winter's Yoga Mala benefit my fundraising efforts to get to Kenya and volunteer.
Brooks Rainey-Pearson, Lauren Sacks, and myself will be holding a Yoga Mala at Carrboro Yoga Company on SATURDAY DECEMBER 18TH from 2:00-4:30. The Mala will be to bring the Winter Solstice in. We will shed what we don't need anymore and go into Winter freer and clearer. We will practice 108 sun salutes (don't be scared) broken into four rounds of 27. It is a wonderful way to move into a new season with grace. Each round has a dedication and read more about it and sign up on Carrboro Yoga's website on the workshops page www.mycyco.com

If you cannot attend the Yoga Mala and you want to donate you can by visiting my fundraising web page. https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients/ayoga/campaign.jsp?campaign=10 Any donation is amazing and appreciated. If you don't have money to donate you can donate your energy around my intention to get to Kenya. Energy is a equally as powerful to me.

Over the coming year you will hear much more about this and in the meantime I wish you lots of peace, light, and love.

Leslie Kaminoff at Triangle Yoga

2010-12-08T14:08:00.000-05:00

Leslie Kaminoff, author of Yoga Anatomy, director of the Breathing Project, teacher to me and to Lies, and, as I like to tease him, a man of great stature and gravitas, will be in Chapel Hill in February to present on breathing and yoga anatomy at Triangle Yoga. Speaking from experience, I know you will have some mind-blowing revelations about how you approach your breath and, if you're a teacher, how you describe the breath to your students. Sign up by January 24 for the early bird discount.

Aw, sweet proof.

2010-12-06T23:09:00.004-05:00

Men's Night

2010-12-06T15:31:00.000-05:00

During our winter schedule, which encompasses the crazy holidays of December, the renewed commitments of January, and the wintry bleakness of February, we're trying something new: Men's Night. Every Tuesday, men are invited to enjoy our evening classes for only $6. These are:

5:45–7:00, Yoga with Blake (himself a man)
6:00–7:15, Flow Yoga with Michelle
7:15–8:30, Power Flow Yoga: Kunga Vinyasa with Sarah
7:30–8:45, Gentle and Restorative Yoga with Ann

This is a fantastic array of classes, from the slower paced to the faster, and we hope you'll sample them all.

Our intention here is to encourage an underserved population to come in and discover the benefits of a regular yoga practice. It is certainly not to exclude any member of the population. (Whether you self-identify as male or see gender as a continuum, we're very happy to extend the offer to you!) It is, instead, to include more people in our yoga community, and to help them receive the gifts yoga has to offer. And as those of us who spend time with men know, the world will be a happier place when more men are doing yoga!

This just in! Power flow Monday 7-8:15am ROCKS!

2010-12-06T11:04:00.010-05:00

This just in! Power flow Monday 7-8:15am ROCKS!

Well, I was just pleased as a posey this morning at all the faces that showed up WHILE IT WAS STILL DARK to practice, move, and join in community.

I was so proud to don my new "Breathe" CYCo. tank top...

(Breathe is written upside down. You know, to remind you as you look down at your shirt. Awesome!)

I was glad to see everyone taking care of themselves, resting when they needed, and challenging themselves, too!

I loved having Dawn Carr and Patricia Mendizabal (fellow CYCo Mornings teachers) come by! How rad!

Remember: we don't need to always have the answer, but it is important to ask...

What can I do that serves myself, serves others, and serves a greater good?

Word up. Can't wait until next week. <3 -Ali

Winter Schedule

2010-12-03T10:20:00.000-05:00

Our winter schedule is in full swing now, with your old favorites returning, a host of new Power Flow Yoga classes on weekday mornings (see Ali's and Sarah's class descriptions below), and a series of Yoga 201 workshops scheduled for Saturday afternoons in January and February. You can see the always-current online schedule here, or download a PDF here. Note the free classes—Michelle's community class is free this Saturday at 2:00 p.m., and Alison's Power Flow Yoga is free Monday morning at 7:00 a.m.

Don't forget to look at our workshop offerings, too, as we have some lovely ways to deepen your practice. Ann's Restorative Yoga for the Holidays workshop on 12/11 is almost full; sign up to reserve your spot!

The Life of a Kunga Yogi

2010-12-01T13:32:00.001-05:00

Having recently moved into the area, I feel compelled to share my love of yoga with you.

About five years ago, I stumbled upon yoga having always wanted to try it but never the guts to walk into a class. I now believe, looking back on it, that I arrived in my first class at the perfect time in my life. Little did I know then, but that one class was going to form who I am today.

After a few years of practicing yoga, I decided to gain my certification. At that point in my life I was merely treading water and had always felt that there was something missing. Through my beautiful support system I was urged to just "go for it." Once again, it was the greatest decision of my life.

My training was through Wilmington Yoga Center but most importantly, my mentor, teacher, and creator of that studio is Kristin Cooper-Gulak. Her Kunga program is designed specifically to teach passion with compassion. It teaches us that yoga is a mere stepping stone to the possibilities of service. As Mother Theresa's beautiful saying goes, "Love cannot remain by itself, it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is to serve."

Kunga is the kinyerwandan word meaning to help or to serve. The word Kunga was inspired by a trip to visit the orphans of Rwanda after the 1999 genocide. These children are an inspiration through their dedication and love towards forgiving those that killed their parents. We should never forget to have gratitude for the abundance of love and even basic needs that we have. We should challenge ourselves daily by practicing both gratitude and santosa (contentment).

My hope is that I can bring this awareness to those who seek it. For those like me, who simply stumble into a yoga class, my wish is to open their eyes to the true beauty of yoga. Whatever their intention is for coming to class is exactly where they're supposed to be.

I have just started teaching two classes at Carrboro Yoga Company, both of which I am integrating Kunga. On Tuesday nights (7:15-8:30) I teach a Kunga Power Vinyasa class and Friday mornings (9:15-10:30) a Basic Kunga Vinyasa class.

Kunga Vinyasa is a powerful flow which challenges ourselves to expand the boundaries that define us spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Kunga, as said earlier, means to serve which is such a beautiful concept to be attached with yoga. If we can first learn to serve ourselves, then we can be better examples for others both on and off the mat. Kunga Vinyasa inspires students through innovative and dynamic sequences to think beyond their mats and into the world.

Kunga classes also come with a theme each month. It is my job as a teacher to integrate these ideas into each class and hopefully leave my students with a desire to learn and do more.

By using the word Kunga and teaching some of the various namaskars inspired by this humbling word, I am also donating 5% of my earnings to under-served populations. Currently, the donations are going toward the Homes of Hope orphanages in India. These young girls have been rescued from living the life of beggars and prostitution and literally given a home of hope. There they are provided with love, food, shelter, schooling, and yoga. For more on this very important matter please visit... http://www.homeofhopeindia.org/

It is really important as teachers that we join together and act on what we preach. I hope that this message has explained from my heart the beauty of Kunga and thus of yoga. After all, helping others to find peace and compassion is the true art of yoga.

With gratitude,
Sarah

New Class Mondays 7-8:15am! (Dec 6th)

2010-11-17T13:33:00.014-05:00

Your Intentional Week: Mondays 7-8:15am (Starts December 6)

Hello Carrboro Yoga Universe!

Ali Hinks here (pictured with my brother's huskies...wish I could take credit for their cuteness.)

I am extremely excited to teach at the studio with some of my old friends and all my new CyCO friends. Sage and Lies have been wonderful to work with in order to bring you a new class for the winter semester…

Power Flow: Your Intentional Week!

Monday mornings 7-8:15am

This isn’t just one more Monday.

This isn’t just another week to cross off.

This week is monumental, life-changing, and revolutionary. Take charge of your week first thing Monday morning and refuse to be asleep at the wheel.

We will specifically speak to your intentions as a vehicle of purpose in this very nitty-gritty workaday world. Breathing techniques, meditation, and written brainstorming are interwoven into the postures to help you unearth the power to create your intentional week.

And, why yes! This is a power flow class! In Sage’s

*Salsa Rosetta Stone of Yoga*

power flow is like hot salsa. We will flow matching breath to movement, as well as exploring challenging holds, balances, back bends and inversions. This class is appropriate for you if you are ready to build strength, are an athlete in training, or have some experience with “flow” or “Vinyasa” yoga. I will, of course, offer variations throughout class to speak to all levels!

DECEMBER 6 CLASS FREE TO ALL!

Deep-Tissue Yoga

2010-11-11T07:18:00.001-05:00

Saturday, November 20, 3:30–5:30 p.m., Ruth Newnam—a massage therapist as well as leader of our noon Tuesday/Thursday Power Flow Yoga classes—will give a workshop on deep-tissue yoga. This is great for anyone who wants to learn techniques to work out the kinks in the muscles and fascia at home, using foam rollers, tennis balls, and yoga asanas. It's only $25. You can sign up here.

Better yet, begin your afternoon with our donation class for Habitat, led this month by Andrea Rezendes and starting at 2:00 p.m. That will warm you up for the deep-tissue work! Bring a donation in any amount.

Here, our co-owner Sage Rountree explains the benefits of such self-massage for athletes—but of course, the benefits extend to everyone:

Give and Get Yoga for the Holidays

2010-11-04T07:06:00.001-04:00

We're rolling out a special for the months of November and December. Buy a five-class pass for a friend, and you’ll get a free class. Buy a ten-class pass, and you’ll get a free class, plus a card good for two specialty coffee drinks at Weaver Street Market! Take your friend to class and enjoy a drink and conversation afterward.

If you’d like to give the gift to yourself, we’re offering a free class with a five-class pass or two free classes with a ten-class pass.

Give, get—everybody wins, especially because as with all our class passes, the classes on the card never expire!

Stop by the front desk to sign up, or purchase a five- or ten-class pass online and pick up your free classes and coffee vouchers at the front desk. We have a beautiful gift bag for your presentation to your friend!

Love Is Presence: November/December

2010-11-02T14:52:00.000-04:00

Remaining present in our relationships with others is a challenge. We’re often lost in a trance of reactivity, unable to truly be with other people because we’re under the spell of own thoughts and emotions. Ironically, the closer the relationship, the more potential it has to trigger a loss of presence as we seek to manage and control everything, from what we’re feeling to the impression we’re making to the behavior of the other person. Rather than closeness, we often feel stress, alienation, and contention.

Meditation has been described as “stopping the war”—the internal war we ceaselessly wage against ourselves though self-aversion and recrimination, as well as the external war we wage against others through our judgment of and anger at them for not being who we think they should be. In order to stop the war, we must first become aware of all the ways, both gross and subtle, that we go to battle throughout the day, against ourselves and against each other. We must also become willing to experience the feelings beneath this reactivity. Our practice teaches us to both see what is true in each moment and to be with it. It is, in other words, a practice of unconditional love.

The upcoming series of Love Is Presence will focus on bringing our mindfulness practice into our relationships. We will explore how to use mindfulness to remain present with others by listening closely (both to what others are saying and to our own internal dialogue), communicating wisely, waking up to old storylines, becoming aware of rising reactivity, and finding the capacity to forgive ourselves—and each other – when interactions do not go as we may have wished.

The Dalai Lama has famously said that “My religion is kindness.” True kindness, which is the expression of presence, is not an easy thing. It requires courage, commitment, and practice that lasts a lifetime. And yet, if we wish to truly love, practice we must.

—Abra Fortune Chernik

Please join us for the upcoming 6-week session of Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training, Monday evenings from 7:15 to 8:45, beginning November 8. Register here. Drop-ins are welcome at $25 per session.

Yin Yoga Teacher Training with Shala Worsley

2010-10-12T17:04:00.000-04:00

Teachers and practitioners alike will enjoy the yin yoga teacher training workshop led by Asheville Yoga Center's Shala Worsley at our studio October 22–24. This quiet and deep practice works into the connective tissues of the body and allows plenty of stillness for self-study and reflection.

Shala Worsley

You can read more about the workshop and sign up here. If you are enrolled in or considering AYC's 500-hour teacher training, this module will earn you credits.

For a taste of yin yoga, follow the routine in this podcast.

The Art of Assisting and Adjusting Students

2010-10-04T16:56:00.002-04:00

Our friend Sommer is teaching this workshop at Triangle Yoga this weekend. She has wonderful information to impart and will surely do it with clarity and grace! —Sage

Coming this Saturday, October 9, 1 pm-4 pm

TEACHER TRAINING WORKSHOP

The Art of Assisting and Adjusting Students

with Sommer Parris-Sobin, Certified Anusara Yoga Instructor

triangleyoga.com

This workshop is for teachers of any style of yoga interested in learning and practicing hands on adjustments and verbal assists in a variety of poses. Learn to enhance freedom and safely adjust your students so they have a direct taste of their own inner freedom. Learn to see through the eyes of the Goddess and to recognize the beautiful expression in every student's pose. Learn to discern and offer one enhancement in any given pose that will open them to more expansion within. This special workshop is for seasoned teachers of any style of hatha looking to be re-inspired, newer teachers looking to hone their skills, and for any dedicated student of hatha yoga.

Bring a notebook and an open mind! There will be a short warm up asana practice as well as partner work as we work through adjustments of various postures.

$50 early bird rate, $55 day of event. Space is limited!

Sommer Parris-Sobin is a certified Anusara Yoga Instructor who resides with her husband and baby daughter in Chapel Hill, NC. Along with teaching local classes, national workshops, and extended trainings, Sommer's passion is guiding yoga teachers in developing their own unique voice and style. Sommer has served on the Anusara Yoga Certification Review Board since 2007 and has helped many teachers grow within the certification process. She is deeply committed to assisting each person in discovering the highest manifestation of their own lives. Her teaching is also infused with her love and training in herbal medicine, energetic healing, nutrition, and self transformation work.

All hours count toward RYT continuing education credits and toward Anusara Inspired and Certification requirements.

Variations on Vinyasa

2010-09-29T13:22:00.005-04:00

In my class this week (join me for a repeat Thursday night at 5:45), there are a lot of opportunities for the vinyasa from plank through chaturanga to cobra or upward-facing dog to downward-facing dog. This opportunity happens about forty times in the sequence, which begins with warm-up moves, builds to standing poses, and segues into twists and hip openers. Students have the opportunity to move or hold as they see fit, and most follow the flow of the sequence, using smaller movements during the warm-up, taking the "standard" vinyasa in the middle, and toning things down as the pace and energy of the practice shift.

This is something I work with in my own practice when I take classes. It can be tough to make a conscious commitment to doing less—to holding plank while the rest of the room flows around me, to not executing yet another sloppy, misaligned chaturanga and putting my shoulder health at risk. Here are some options that I use; try them and see which work for you. Then deploy them often in your practice, even if the rest of the room is moving through the standard form yet again. Your teacher will be glad to see you responding to your body's needs.

Knees-down plank to chaturanga
Taking cobra rather than upward-facing dog (for a kyphotic body like mine, cobra is tougher than up dog)
Exhale to knees-chest-chin, bottom high; inhale to low cobra (for more work, then exhale to reverse to knees-chest-chin and push up)
Inhale front leg back, keeping it off the ground in a one-legged plank; exhale, one-legged chaturanga; inhale, lower the foot as you transition to your backbend
Hold in plank
Hold in plank and lift one foot, then the other, while keeping core aligned
Lower to chaturanga and push back up, or do two push-ups
Lower the knees for table; hold here
Swap plank/chaturanga for cow/cat
Inhale, plank; exhale, lower the knees for table; inhale and lift the knees to let them hover an inch off the floor; exhale to downward-facing dog
Inhale, knees down plank; exhale, child's pose

Please add any other ideas!

Off the Mat, Into the World

2010-09-17T16:54:00.002-04:00

It's a big weekend here in Yoga Month, as studios around the world are participating in the Global Mala Project and Yoga Aid. We'll be donating all studio proceeds from tomorrow's Yoga Mala at CYCo. to Off the Mat, Into the World, an organization that harnesses yoga for social change. Please, come join us, or donate directly.

Float into Fall

2010-09-16T10:31:00.008-04:00

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn. —Elizabeth Lawrence

Fall is in the air and around the corner. The cool mornings and evenings. The leaves dancing in the wind. The sigh of relief because the air is dry. The leaves starting to turn and fall from the trees. Float into Fall with a Yoga Mala on Saturday, September 18, from 2:00 to 4:30 with the leadership of Brooks Rainey Pearson, Jennie Dickson, Lauren Sacks, and me—Michelle Johnson.

Yoga Malas happen on the Solstices and Equinoxes. In the Mala we complete a moving meditation made up of 108 sun salutations. The salutations are broken into 4 rounds of 27 with a different dedication for each round.

The dedications include:

Round One: Dedications for Personal Transformation and Realization.This round is for all of one's prayer for your personal activation, healing, fertilization and manifestation of the potency of one's life. Self-realization and actualization. No prayer is to earthy or heavenly. Typically, the prayers are for healing qualities: compassion, love, creativity and the specific areas and projects that are part of the transformative fabric of one's life.

Round Two: Dedications for Family, Friends and Precious Jewels (anyone you have unresolved conflict with)

Round Three: Dedications for the World – The Bodhisattva round where we pray for what we care about and are active in transforming from war, global warming, children with AIDS, to your local needs. A very powerful round.

Round Four: Dedications to the Source – The conversation between you and God, the praise, gratitude and joy.

Why 108 Sun Salutations?

108 is considered a sacred number in Hinduism and yoga. Malas or garlands of prayer beads, come as a string of 108 beads plus one "guru bead" around which the other 108 beads turn like planets around the sun. According to yogic tradition, there are 108 pithas, or sacred sites, throughout India. And there are also 108 Upanishads and 108 marma points, or sacred places of the body.

The mala is a moving meditation, not a competition. We will approach our time together with grace, holding gratitude for all that summer has brought, letting go of what we want to leave in the past, and with intention about moving into fall. We will start each round with a seated meditation and end each round with a break for asana, meditation, or savasana. At the end of all four rounds we will have a supple savasana with guided meditation and relaxation. You will leave feeling centered, and energized as you move into the next season.

$25 if you pre-register. $30 if you register the day of. Studio proceeds go to Off the Mat, Into the World. We will see you there!

Turn Off, Tune Up, Drop In

2010-09-16T10:08:00.000-04:00

My most recent piece for Competitor Running is a play on Timothy Leary's famous "turn on, tune in, drop out." I contend that changing the prepositions yields a useful suggestion for running: turn off, tune up, drop in. The same works for yoga, for meditation, for mindful living.

When things get loud inside—when the mind is caught up in the fluctuations that keep you from resting in your true nature—seek to turn off the noise (breathing deeply helps), to tune up your form (relax everywhere you can, and recenter in mountain pose), and drop in to your experience of the moment.

Healing through Conscious Awareness

2010-09-15T13:58:00.001-04:00

HarDarshan Khalsa sent us this piece, which previews the workshop Hargopal Kaur Khalsa will lead at CYCo. on October 16.

Healing Through Conscious Awareness
The Yogic Healing Art of Sat Nam Rasayan

Do you remember being a very young child and feeling a sense of oneness with all life? Before you learned patterns of holding tension in the body, before you had a concept of fear or judgment? That feeling is what is accessed in the practice of Sat Nam Rasayan healing. The foundation of all healing begins with relaxation. The foundation of relaxation begins with the breath. When you are able to breathe deeply and fully and come to a state of relaxation, you are on your way to accessing the healing energy within you and around you! Through breathing and relaxing, you find the place of deep inner silence, what the yogis call “shuniya”. Within this space of non-attachment, this place of no agenda, you can access the space of emptiness which actually contains everything.

What are some of the ways that this state of healing awareness can be used? Like the experience of shuniya itself, the ways are limitless. First of all, just finding your own inner silence is a beautiful way to experience peacefulness. When your mind is peaceful, it becomes easier to access your intuition, your creativity, and your joy. This will affect your relationships, your work, and how you relate to your physical environment. Sat Nam Rasayan affects how you function in the world! If you are a bodyworker, a physician, a counselor, a teacher, or a parent, you may find that being able to access this inner state of expansiveness changes the quality of what you are able to give to others.

Sat Nam Rasayan (SNR) began as a healing practice in India thousands of years ago, but only in the last 20 years or so has this practice has been taught publicly. Previously, it was only taught in silence, passed from master to student. In formal SNR practice, the patient usually lies on the floor and is made comfortable with pillows and blankets. The healer sits next to the patient and lightly touches him/her, usually on the closest arm. It is not necessary for the healer to have physical contact with the patient (in fact, SNR can be done as distance healing), but that light touch can be comforting and reassuring.

The healer will then enter into the “sacred sensitive space” through a process of brief meditation. As the healer allows every sensation, such as sound, touch, thought, smell, etc., the sensations of the patient are also included. Simply allowing what is, becomes a healing experience. Without specific agendas, blocks of energy flow, physical conditions, and old psychological patterns can be released. The healer may become aware of actions the patient can take later at home, such as diet, exercise, meditation, etc., to further the healing process.

How can you learn this ancient and sacred science? One of the most accomplished SNR practitioners in the world will be visiting the Triangle to teach this transformative practice. Hargopal Kaur Khalsa from Los Angeles will be leading a workshop on Saturday, Oct. 16, from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the Carrboro Yoga Company. The fee will be $108. Reserve your space here or call 919-933-2921. Hargopal Kaur will also be doing private healing sessions on Friday afternoon, Oct. 15, and Sunday morning, Oct. 17. To reserve your space, contact HarDarshan at 919-929-7278.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

2010-09-10T14:27:00.007-04:00

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou

I'm sitting on my back porch writing this post in a home that has transformed over the last 7 years. My partner and I bought our house in 2003. It was a shack that was falling apart and we were so proud to be buying it. We knew it needed a lot of work and we embarked on a long journey, which we are still on, trying to make our home what we want it to be. We've replaced floors, windows, siding, done a huge renovation which included a whole kitchen re-do and adding an upstairs. Our home has seen a lot. It was built in 1898 and was the first schoolhouse in Carrboro. The Mill owned the house and made hosiery in it and at some point the former owner bought the house for $5000 in 1968 and it stayed in his family until we purchased it from him. Everyone warned us about buying this house, no one could see the vision but Jeff, my partner. I often wonder what this home would say if the walls could talk, it's been through so much. I look around it with gratitude because it is wonderful to be in a home that we got to shape. I feel gratitude because we are lucky and privileged. There are many people who don't have homes or are living in spaces that don't feel like home. Owning a home has represented a sense of pride for folks for centuries. Homes are spaces that people gather in, eat in, sleep in, raise children in, and have families come back to for holidays in. Our homes are central to our lives.

This quarter Carrboro Yoga Company's karma partner is Habitat for Humanity. We are holding three donations classes this quarter and the money raised will go to the Habitat for Humanity Bike Ride held in Durham on October 30. This money will support Habitat's belief that everyone deserves a safe, decent, and affordable place to live. They build homes for and with people in need regardless of race or religion. They welcome volunteers and supporters from all backgrounds.

If you want to support this cause and ultimately support someone being able to own a home who is in need, please come to the first donation class, tomorrow, Saturday September 11, from 2:00–3:15 pm taught by me, Michelle Johnson, at Carrboro Yoga Company.

For more information about the bike ride, visit http://www.durhamhabitat.org/.

Why Practice Breathing?

2010-09-08T06:54:00.000-04:00

Helen Tapper is leading a workshop on breath exercises, or pranayama, this Saturday, September 11, at 2 p.m. It's perfect for any level of practitioner. I attended her last workshop and found myself both relaxed and alert afterward. Sign up here to reserve your spot, or simply drop in. Here is Helen's take on the reason to practice something we all do all the time. —Sage

Why should I practice breathing? The body breathes on its own. I have a busy life. Why should I add this to my list of things to do? . . . and, by the way, what is pranayama?

Pranayama is a Sanskrit word meaning to restrain, build and channel (yama) the life force (prana). In the eight-limbed path of yoga, pranayama is the fourth, following the practice of asana, the poses.

I fell in love with pranayama during a yoga teaching training course. At first I didn’t understand the value of a practice focused solely on breathing, assuming that I got this while practicing asana and while watching the breath during meditation. Little did I know that deliberate, conscious breathwork would allow me to undo layers of unconscious tension, helping me to relax and open in a profoundly new way.

It is difficult, actually impossible, to separate the body, mind and breath. In The Heart of Yoga, Desikachar explains that the breath is the first to register change, followed by the the body, and lastly, the mind. When we identify with the mind and the process of thinking, we are orienting and looking for answers in the wrong place. As the Zen Buddhists say, you cannot work on the mind from the level of mind. You need to go more deeply, to the roots. Learning to watch and be with the breathing process is a profoundly effective tool to see the deeper aspects of your person, and of your being.

Breathing is both involuntary and voluntary: the body breathes on its own, and it is also possible to consciously alter the breath. The involuntary, autonomic, part of the nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. The sympathetic branch works in sympathy with the reaction process: when there is fear, the breath will quicken, the heart rate will speed up, and blood will be sent to the muscles in preparation for fighting or flighting. Many of us live in this state.

A common antidote to this state, whether in or out of yoga class, is to “take a deep breath.” Why? Deep breathing is an effect of the parasympathetic nervous system. This pattern supports relaxation, and works counter to the reactionary patterns: the heart rate slows, the breath deepens, and vital energies are directed towards healing, digestion, and restoration. The focus moves towards evolution rather than fear.

Breathing in a deep and full and natural way invites the entire system to slow and calm. Forcing big breaths does not. Trying to make the body take a deep breath—especially in the midst of crisis—is only adding more tension into the system, adding fuel to the fire. So the key is to practice breathing, when you are in a conscious and relaxed state.

When we practice we work with effort both masculine and willful, and feminine and receptive. Practically, this means we deliberately engage the muscles that support breathing: we learn to use the abdominals to deepen the exhale, discover the movement of the diaphragm and the corresponding expansion through the abdominal activity, and stretch open the muscles of the chest. Throughout this work, we are aware of the quality of effort, being mindful of any strain or force. We work to find the effortless effort of which the Taoists speak. We question what it means to relax and soften into an area, to allow rather than force a deep breath. We open to receive the breath, to be inspired. The heart of breathwork is about being rather than doing. It is about being present to the flow of breath, experiencing increasingly subtle sensations and rediscovering the natural rhythm of a fully breathing body. This full breath feeds the cells and quiets the system, which in turn invites more deep breathing: relaxation begets relaxation. Eventually fuller breath and a slower heartrate become the “new normal” and this relaxed state is more accessible during stress or crisis.

So this is why we practice: to find ourselves outside of patterns of stress and effort. We practice to discover a sense of ease and fullness previously unseen. We practice bringing this deeper sense of self to the surface of our daily living.

Blake Tedder and the Be Here Now 40th Anniversary Celebration

2010-09-06T22:24:00.005-04:00

Hi everyone! I meant to put this out on our blogroll much earlier. I have been selected as one of the 7 bloggers who are helping commemorate the 40th anniversary to Be Here Now. This book brought YOGA to so many people in the 70s. We owe a lot of the popularity of the practice to this influential book. I'll be using my weekly meditations in my classes while doing this project. I make my posts every Wednesday. Keep up with them and make comments at RamDassNow.com. - blake (I teach Tues 5:30p starting tomorrow, and Thurs 7:15p)

Be Here Now 40th Anniversary Celebration

Ram Dass Now Blog: In celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Be Here Now and it's enhanced e-book release, Love Serve Remember Foundation and HarperOne Publishing have started a blog at www.ramdassnow.com featuring daily meditations on "From Bindu to Ojas" (the brown pages in Be Here Now). At Ram Dass Now, seven participants are mindfully working their way through the 108 sacred pages, in just as many days. This is where they come to share their thoughts and experiences. Ram Dass will participate on a regular basis, responding to the participants, his readers, his community, and his friends. Please join the blog and add your comments at ramdassnow.com.

Love Is Presence

2010-09-06T16:10:00.000-04:00

Abra Fortune Chernik teaches Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training, which this fall is moving to Monday evenings, 7:15–8:45. While drop-ins are welcome, the class is run as a series, with topics building sequentially. Committing to the series will give you both accountability and a chance to develop a consistent mindfulness practice, which will increase the benefits of this powerful tool.

Abra's bio is posted on our site; read here to learn about her background, and click here to sign up for the full series, which begins next Monday.

Love will Have the Last Word

2010-09-03T13:10:00.002-04:00

When I speak of love
I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response which is
little more than emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force
which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme
unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks
... the door which leads to ultimate reality.
-Martin Luther King Jr.-

Love, Love, Love. It's been on my mind lately. I'm trying to figure out how to lead from my heart with love. It's hard work. If you watch TV, read google news, email, or communicate at all then you know there is so much hate to consume. We are bombarded with whose right and wrong, whose good and bad, whose hating on who, whose harming who... the list goes on and on. I wonder what the world would be like if we were living with a connection to the earth and our bodies, noticing what we and others feel, embodied, and if we held compassion for everyone we come in contact with even if they push all of our buttons. I believe yoga can transform the world but the only way for that to happen is with an intention centered around love. If you want to come and move from your heart, with your breath, connected to your spirit, and to feel a connection to others then join me for a free class tomorrow at 2:00pm at CYCO. The focus will be love. We'll make individual intentions and a class intention offering a prayer or hope for the world. Love will have the last word.

My regular teaching schedule:
Sundays 4:30-5:45
Tuesdays 6:00-7:15
Wednesdays 12:00-1:00
Note-on Sunday September 4th Erin Dangler is subbing for me.

Spotlight on Blake

2010-08-31T16:02:00.000-04:00

As I'm changing the spotlight page on Blake to preview our new fall schedule, which starts tomorrow, I can't bring myself to remove all of his great content completely. So I'm reproducing it here! On our fall schedule, Blake teaches Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. and Thursdays at 7:15 p.m. —Sage

Spotlight on Blake Tedder, in Blake's Words

A lot is going on in my world right now. I am finding myself teaching yoga six days a week around the Triangle. I find myself with headphones on in the studios of Carrboro’s local radio station, WCOM 103.5 FM, hosting the surprisingly internationally popular Full Lotus Kirtan Show. Check it out at fulllotuskirtan.com. You can listen to all episodes by podcast on iTunes. Just search for my name in the iTunes store. I get tons of free music (a lot of which I play in my classes at CYCo.) and I get to interview the most incredible people like Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Shyam Das, and others. It’s so much fun. I chair one committee at the radio station and sit on another. I volunteer weekly at the UNC Jaycee Burn Center as a part of the SOAR (Survivors Offering Assistance in Recovery) program of the Phoenix Society. I have a dog now. Talk about a total reprioritization of my life. I bought a house. I’m digging my roots here. I also find myself surrounded by an incredible family, and by an incredible community of people that teach and practice yoga here in Carrboro, and by incredible new people each day. I am filled with a lot of love and blessings right now, and I am learning how to handle it. Step by step. I am honored to teach at Carrboro Yoga Company and help so many people find a little more peace as I do the same for myself.

Krishna Das with Blake

Starting August 8, I am honored to be involved with the fortieth-anniversary celebration of Be Here Now, a incredibly influential book on Indian spirituality and yoga by Ram Dass. For 108 days, four others and I will be blogging about or reflections and meditations on the famous 108 brown pages in the middle of Be Here Now. I don’t have a link to the site at this point, but you will soon find out more at RamDass.org and fulllotuskirtan.com.

Om Shanti (peace)

- blake

* * *

Here’s video of my five-month-old brindle lab puppy Veda. We’re completely in love. I let her eat whatever’s left on my plate. Yes, true love.

* * *

This is a song I wrote for this CYCo. spotlight on me. (Click here to download the MP3.) I had put down my songwriting pen for three years until this one. It’s called “Downward Facing Dog.” Don’t worry. It’s meant to be humorous.

Krishna Das with Blake

My Take on the Practice

Hi, you. I wanted to write about my vision of yoga practice, so you’d get a better understanding of where I am coming from in my teachings. With all that follows, I don’t want to scare you away from my classes. In fact, it’s the other way around: I’d really love to meet you. I lead a fun class. It’s challenging. It’s engaging. Most of all, I try to make it an enjoyable experience. And if my class is not for you, there are so many great teachers here at CYCo. that can help you be where you need to be. Yoga is the most powerful practice I have encountered in my life. I love it cellularly. It has helped me heal and helped me be more loving and more peaceful. I have been practicing for a relatively short time, but I feel very honored to be able to share with you what I have learned through my personal journey to this point.

The Short

We develop stress . . . yes . . . we all agree. And instead of letting our minds try in vain to change the world around us to eliminate stress (and thereby create more stress), we learn to be with the stress, with the tension, with the fire, and surrender to it. And only from there can we watch the illusion that you and I are limited beings vanish before us.

The Long

My approach to a good stretch, dealing with stress . . . oh, right, and dying consciously, is pretty simple in concept. I think it resonates with a lot of people. We encounter stress in our lives, and our bodies tense against it. I know you know what I am talking about. Whether this is stress from our jobs, our spouses, the weather, the mosquitoes, our parents not raising us right, or from a much deeper existential stress of being born in this material and conditional reality, is up for you to figure out for yourself. Regardless of the source, the stress manifests in our bodies as we react to it. The shoulders tense up toward the ears. The butt clenches. The forehead furls.

The mind perceives a threat of change to its tried and true patterns (I, me, mine). It builds up this tension and stress fighting that threat of change. The mind sends signals to the brain and body to activate different parts of the body to take action in the physical world to change the perceived threats. You see, it thinks it can do that. The physical body builds tensions from reacting in habitual ways to habitually perceived threats thereby producing knots, muscular tension, pain, and, yes, more stress.

Our goal, to me, in hatha yoga practice is to release and channel this unconsciously held tension in the body, to liberate this energy that has been blocked and wasted. We put the body under conscious tension—conscious stress—and relax. We essentially train the muscles and nervous system that would habitually tense up under stress to—get this—relax under stress. What a concept!

It’s essentially cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that you do to yourself. It’s one way to train people who are scared of heights to fly in a hot air balloon. We train the mind and body to relax in the presence of the stressors. Only instead of gradually going higher and higher from the ground and then learning to relax, we put the body under gradually more and more tension and stress and then relax. Is this all making sense to you?

Now, in the spiritual path of Yoga, it works kind of the same way. We gradually build up mental tension over time and train ourselves to relax in the tension—in the heat. This is tapasya, or “heat/austerity,” as it’s translated. Tapasya may begin simply by not eating the cake on the plate in front of you, knowing that it would be much better for you if you didn’t eat it. You want the cake, I know, and darnit, you’re hungry, yes, feel that feeling? Arrrrggggghhh. And even though you have set the intention to resist the urge, the mind will always race and strategize to convince you to eat that cake. “Come on, you, you should reward yourself for going this long without eating cake . . . with this piece of cake.” If you maintain your presence, connect with the breath, and relax, the craving will go away—or at least shift. This is tapasya. The mind will eventually surrender. And you will realize it was not hunger that was driving you, but the mind’s inherent need to consume and fill.

The logical progression of this shows us that the greatest tapasya you and I can endure is to be content and even-keeled through all stages of losses and gains in this wonderful and tragic life. Not just our struggles with cake. Though they are many and unending. We must learn to face our own pain and each other’s pain and, yes, our own inevitable and totally private annihilation. There it is… I said it. We don’t like to talk about death and dying. I know. It brings up stuff in me, too. I even debated writing about it here. This is the essence of tapasya, though. The piece of cake is a wonderful and necessary step in the process. But what else are we preparing for? We both know, we can’t keep pushing it away. What are we all doing here constantly becoming? Why is yoga practice so important and so meaningful in our lives? Why does it touch us so deeply? Because, well, we so deeply want to feel like we’re home in our bodies. We want to feel connected to each other. We want to be exactly where we want to be. We want to love fully. We want to believe there is a true path to peace. We want to believe we’re immortal. I think this is all totally within the realm of possible experience. But, seriously, don’t take my word for it. Jump in and swim around and get busy being happy. I’m working on it, too, my friend.

Namaste, Sri You.

* * *

This is my favorite poem right now:
“The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

© 1995 by Oriah House, From "Dreams Of Desire"
Published by Mountain Dreaming, 300 Coxwell Avenue, Box 22546, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4L 2A0

Foundations of Flow Yoga

2010-08-28T18:44:00.003-04:00

"You can learn new things at any time in your life if you're willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you."

Barabra Sher

You still have time to sign up for the Foundations of Flow Workshop tomorrow. Brooks Rainey-Pearson and I (Michelle Johnson) will lead you through a warm up, sun salutes, warriors, standing poses, inversions, hip openers, and a wonderful svasana. The difference in this workshop and a flow class is that we will break it all down. Often in class we are moving so fast that we don't leave time for questions in the middle of a pose in class. Sometimes it is hard for folks to ask questions in the middle of class. Sometimes folks don't know they have a questions in the moment because they are trying to figure out where their arm or foot or elbow goes.

The workshop will allow for movement, and discussion about alignment, breath work, sequencing, and we will leave plenty of time for questions. This will be an interactive workshop and we promise we will have fun. If you have a lot of experience or a little experience with flow yoga you can approach this with a beginners mind and curiosity and see what opens up for you.

And guess what.. you have a few more hours to sign up before tomorrow and get a discounted rate. It's $15 before tomorrow and if you don't sign up before hand than it is $20.
We'll see you tomorrow!

Relaxation for Better Health

2010-08-27T10:10:00.000-04:00

Tuesday's Diane Rehm show featured an interesting discussion with Dr. Herbert Benson, author of the groundbreaking book The Relaxation Response. Dr. Benson explains in that book, and in his more recent work, Relaxation Revolution, the effect that stress has on health and ways that meditation can mitigate stress's deleterious affect on our bodies.

This fall, we're offering two programs to help you manage stress and learn to meditate. On Sunday evenings, Jenny Chafe leads the series course Stress Reduction 101, which will be followed by a short series on Holiday Well-Being. Abra Fortune Chernik's popular course Love Is Presence: Vipassana Meditation and Mindfulness Training moves to Monday evenings and welcomes drop-ins as well as series students. We'd love to see you in for one or both.

Habitat for Humanity’s Halloween Bike Ride

2010-08-25T10:37:00.007-04:00

This quarter, CYCo. is aligning itself with Habitat for Humanity of Durham's Halloween Ride. We will be donating free classes to all Silver and Gold Hammer Raise the Roof Donors. Additionally, we are donating a 5-class pass to the raffle—a new event this year—and, of course, we will be donating all proceeds of our monthly donation classes to Habitat.

This ride started seven years ago as a small, obscure event with under a hundred participants. Because I filled out a post-ride survey back in 2004, I was contacted by Habitat and asked to join their Bike Ride Task Force to help grow this fundraiser. I've been eating pizza with them every month since then! Fast forward to 2009–10 and the Habitat Halloween Ride, along with her sister ride, the Bull Moon Ride, have grown to the point where those two events alone last year raised enough money to build an entire house for the Bilious Family!

The Bull Moon Ride this year raised $30,000 for the Rahlan-Ksor family to build their dream home. Our goal this year for the Halloween ride is to register 850 riders and raise $70,000.

Everyone has heard of Habitat, yet there are a number of misconceptions out there. Habitat screens candidates to make sure they will be able to uphold their work and financial obligations. Habitat also requires the family for whom a dwelling is constructed to work a minimum of 250 sweat equity hours working on their home and other Habitat homes. Habitat does not give away the homes they build. Each family for whom a home is build pays the actual cost of the home in the form of a no-interest loan. Because the house is built primarily by volunteers and many of the supplies are donated, the cost is greatly reduced over a comparable non-Habitat home. However, Habitat still must purchase the land, supplies, pay for labor and cover the interest that the recipient family does not pay. Hence the cost of a Habitat house is usually around $120,000.

The Habitat Bike Rides are a fun-filled way to help a deserving family start life afresh in a safe and secure homebase. The Halloween Ride is family friendly, fully supported, and has home-baked goodies at the rest stops. Additionally, there will be a rowdy after-party, music, and costumes. New this year is the raffle for a bike, a $500 certificate at a bike shop, and, of course a 5-class yoga class pass at CYCo.! The Bull Moon Ride is a night ride with a music filled tour of downtown Durham, Duke and the American Tobacco Trail followed by great food and beer! Routes for the Halloween Ride are 31, 62 and 100 miles.

If you would like to register for this year's Halloween Ride, which takes place on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 9:00 a.m., registration is now open: click here.

Deepening Your Yoga

2010-08-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

This Saturday, Jenny Chafe will lead a workshop on deepening your yoga, on and off the mat. You can register here. From her website, here's the full description:

Saturday, August 28, 2–4 pm at Carrboro Yoga Co.:

Have you ever finished a great yoga class, and then watched that peaceful relaxation evaporate once you’re back in your daily routine? Or ever wished yoga were less about your effort to “get” a pose and more a place where all the skills and pieces of your life could come into play right there on the mat?

This month take a leap towards integrating your daily life and yoga practice at a new workshop called DEEPENING YOUR YOGA ON AND OFF THE MAT. By exploring simple yoga poses as life metaphors and using mind-body exercises, we’ll start to cultivate more embodiment and well-being in both these realms, infusing our daily life and our yoga with deeper satisfaction and purpose.

For beginners and experienced yoga practitioners alike.

Learn how you can bring your daily life into yoga class or use specific poses outside of class to work with issues like:

boundaries or over-giving
overwhelm or having too much on your plate
overworking
impatience with situations/people/yourself
feeling unfocused
feeling ungrounded
moving from one-sided to multi-view perspectives

Examine your practice of yoga and explore new ways to expand your yogic skills like:

finding and staying within your edge
compassion
focus
being with what is
bringing spirit and inspiration into yoga class

Discover tools from outside of yoga to help you relax and come to centeredness within either before, during, or after class.

COST: $30

LOCATION: Carrboro Yoga Co, corner of N. Greensboro and Weaver Streets, Carrboro, NC (2nd floor, above Panzanella restarurant)

BRING: Your mat if you have one (others will be provided), a journal or clipboard for notes and reflection time, water to drink. Please arrive a few minutes before the workshop and wear comfortable clothes for doing movement and yoga. Bring an extra layer since we won’t be doing poses all the time or working up a sweat as you would in class. A few chairs are available for anyone who needs one.

Questions? Please contact me.

Ready to sign up? Go to MyCYCo.com and follow the “Schedule” link to the “workshops” tab. Or call 919-933-2921 to register.

Props on the Props

2010-08-24T07:46:00.000-04:00

Earlier this summer, Lies and I (OK, mostly Lies) washed the blankets in the Paper Lantern Room. All of our props, including our blankets, in the Gold Circle Room are freshly laundered. (The blankets are super soft, perfect for resting under in a luxurious savasana!) This is no small task; it involves hauling the heavy blankets to the Laundromat, pounds and pounds worth of quarters, and patience and diligence to fold each blanket. A regular yoga practice helps with all these skills.

Two new work-study students comprised our fabulous blanket-washing team this go-round: Emily and Claire. If you're interested in work-study, call us at 933-2921 or write info@mycyco.com. Our program offers free yoga in exchange for simple chores—or sophisticated chores, like working a shift at the front desk.

The blankets are housed in the lovely cabinetry made by Dave Pearson, husband of our fantastic teacher Brooks. We are about to bid the fondest of farewells to Brooks, as she is taking a "real" job at—ahem—Duke University's School of Public Policy. You'll find her subbing and leading the occasional workshop. In fact, this weekend, Brooks and Michelle Johnson are teaching Foundations of Flow. Sign up here.

They're Back and We're Here

2010-08-23T18:39:00.002-04:00

In yoga we often refer to our deep breath as an anchor and center. If you notice your inhales and exhales you'll notice the rising of energy on the inhales and a lift in your body, an awareness of breath moving up, and at the top of the inhale there is a little pause. Then you begin to exhale noticing that energy move down. Then you notice another pause, a quieting and stillness. Try it-breathing in and observing and breathing out and observing.

I often think of the cycle of semesters on campus this way. The hustle and bustle of the Fall semester reminding us that summer is slipping away and that cooler weather and Fall leaves will be here soon. The energy of all the new college students, returning students, professors, graduate students stressing over their dissertations, teachers, students transitioning from middle to high school and high school to college, kindergartners going to school for the first time, parents having empty nest syndrome and celebrating with delight that their children have moved onto some further stage in their growth. The energy is alive and in the air and then there is a process of getting it all done before semester break. Then there is a pause, quiet, stillness. It starts all over again until summer break and so on and so on.. I've lived here for 13 years and each summer there is a pause where Franklin Street quiets down, campus slows, parking spaces are more readily available, the buses are a little emptier, and less bikes are zooming by. Today is the end of the pause and the beginning of the next breath. You can feel the life force, prana, buzzing through town today. It's easy to get caught up in this energy with excitement—or some of us may experience this as an invasion of our quiet summer. Whatever you reaction is, that is fine, just notice it.

If you want to come ride the wave of this energy or practice quieting into what is, come in and check out Carrboro Yoga Company: www.mycyco.com.

We have many classes to offer you. You can meditate, stretch, breathe, flow, work your core, and you will be greeted by wonderful work studies and staff and taught by an amazing array of teachers. We would love to see you there. We give a $10 rate to teachers/students/rescue workers. If you have questions about that rate, just ask. We have pass-card deals and a newcomer’s special. We'll see you there!

"I Wanna Be a Belly Dancer"

2010-08-19T17:51:00.000-04:00

If your parents are anything like mine, they have a few favorite stories about your childhood that they love to pull out over and over, usually in front of people you're trying to impress. My father's favorite is that when I was young, I told him that when I grew up, I wanted to be a "belly dancer." Apparently this was my mispronunciation of "ballet dancer." Either one is pretty funny, given how uncoordinated I was as a child (and, as my husband will hasten to add, still am).

But this Saturday, August 21, my lifelong dream of being a belly dancer will be fulfilled. Camila Karam is leading a workshop where we'll enjoy belly dancing as a way to express our goddess energy, 2–4 p.m. It promises to be a blast. Please join us! You can sign up here.