9/30-10/2
Friday Evening, Saturday & Sunday
AYURVEDIC YOGA IMMERSION
& CERTIFICATION, Part 1
Chaya~Sharon Heller





10/8
Saturday
THAI YOGA MASSAGE
Stephen Shambach

10/8
Saturday Evening
COMMUNITY SATSANG

10/21
Friday Evening
DANCES OF
UNIVERSAL PEACE

10/21-25
Friday Evening, Saturday-Tuesday
CREATIVE KIDS YOGA®
TEACHER TRAINING
Rosemary Clough

10/22 - Deadline for
$500 EARLY-BIRD DISCOUNT
YOGA TEACHER TRAINING
Winter Monthlong Program
(Beginning January 22, 2017)

GET THE MOST FROM YOUR YOGA EXPERIENCE:

• Avoid eating for two or three hours before class. If you practice yoga on a full stomach, you might experience cramps or nausea, especially in twists, deep forward bends, and inversions. The process of digestion can also sap your energy and make you feel lethargic.
  
• Wear comfortable exercise clothing like bike shorts or leggings with a tank top or T-shirt. Layers allow you to easily regulate your body temperature by adding or shedding.
  
• Bring your yoga mat if you have one, and a towel if you sweat a lot. We provide a limited supply of mats, blankets, straps, meditation cushions, eye pillows and tissues for your use at no charge. We also sell yoga and meditation supplies and bottled water.
  
• Arrive early. Getting to class 10 - 20 minutes early can help you settle in and align your attitude with the purpose of the class. While you're waiting you can practice a pose, do a few stretches, or just sit or lie quietly, breathe, and center yourself.
  
• Turn off pagers or cell phones.
• Speak quietly in the practice room. Loud conversations can be distracting to yourself and others. We support and value the building of community, and encourage socializing in the lobby before and after class. Join your classmates there for a cup of herbal tea.
• Make room for others. Be open to adjusting your space so everyone has room to practice.
• Create an intention. To help you focus, you might find it helpful to dedicate your practice to a certain intention. This might be to become more aware, understanding, compassionate, healthy, strong, or skillful. Or it might be for the benefit of a friend, a cause or even yourself.
• Stay until the end of class. Yoga is a holistic practice. Exercise increases heart rate and blood pressure, and brings blood flow away from organs to skeletal muscles. Relaxation brings heart rate and blood pressure back to normal and returns blood flow to the organs. Final relaxation and integration bring deep healing, balance and equilibrium.

CREATE A SAFE PRACTICE

• Practice at your own level, balancing challenge with ease. If you are suffering or in pain, you're not doing yoga. Pushing or straining to keep up with others will only create resistance, stress and injury. You'll make more progress if you take a compassionate attitude toward yourself and work from where you are, rather than from where you think you should be.
  
• Let your teacher know about injuries and vulnerabilities. Avoid working any area of your body that is inflamed. Skip poses you can't or shouldn't do, or try a modified version or an alternative posture.
  
• Stiffness: Always warm-up before stretching. Never bounce while stretching.
  
• Hyper-flexibility: Tendons and ligaments are too loose. Joints are unstable. Focus your stretch in the belly of the muscle, rather than toward the ends of the muscle. Engage and strengthen the muscles around vulnerable joints.
  
• Herniated or Degenerative Disc Diseases: Practice slowly and carefully. Maintain extended spine in forward bends and spinal twists.
  
• Osteoporosis: Practice carefully at 100% to strengthen your bones. Alignment is important. Maintain extended spine in spinal twists. Support your spine in forward bends. Avoid forward and back spinal rocking or putting all your body weight on a vulnerable joint.
  
• High Blood Pressure (un-medicated): Avoid overly vigorous practice. Avoid inverted postures, or any position where your head is below your heart. Avoid kapalabhati (skull shining/breath of fire), or bhastrika (bellows breath).
  
• Low Blood Pressure: Come into and out of postures slowly. If you feel dizzy, bring your head below your heart (child pose).
  
• Asthma: Practice breathing exercises slowly and focus on relaxation.
  
• Emphysema: Avoid vigorous practice, ujjayi breath, kapalabhati and breath holding.
• Infections from the chest up: Avoid inversions.
  
• Diarrhea, Hiatal Hernia, Heartburn, Ulcers: Avoid kapalabhati, abdominal pumping and inversions.
• Overactive Thyroid: Modify postures that deeply stretch the front of the throat. Allow only a gentle curve in your neck or keep your chin tucked.
  
• Epilepsy: Keep your practice gentle rather than overly vigorous. Avoid prolonged holding of postures. Avoid breath holding.
  
• Menstruation & Pre-menstruation: Listen to your body, practice at your own pace, allowing your belly to relax as much as possible. Avoid strong abdominal work like ha-breaths, kapalabhati and bhastrika, abdominal pumping (agni sara) and abdominal strengtheners. Avoid strong, prolonged root lock (mula bandha) or abdominal lock (uddhyana bandha). Avoid full inversions with your feet off the floor. (Half inversions with feet grounded are okay.) Avoid extreme backbends. Avoid prolonged holding of standing postures if you feel weak or tired.
  
• Pregnancy: 1st trimester - Avoid vigorous practice and abdominal work as above. It's okay to lie on your belly (prone). 2nd trimester - Avoid prone postures when they become uncomfortable. Use alternatives standing, kneeling, supine or resting on your side. 3rd trimester -  Practice gently, about 50-60%, as ligaments loosen up and can be easily over stretched. Find alternatives to postures that compress the belly. Lie on left side so as not to constrict the vena cava and aggravate varicose veins and hemorrhoids. Inversions may feel unstable and make breathing difficult. Instead, lie on your back with your legs resting against a wall. Postnatal - Practice at about 80% for 2 months as ligaments are still loose and vulnerable.