Slow, mindful yoga is for people who seek to improve their resilience - physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual - so that they may more easily return to a state of balance after facing life challenges. Consider Yoga provides instruction and guidance to begin and develop this affirming, flexible, and supportive practice.
Slow, mindful yoga uses breath, slow movement with awareness, guided relaxation, and meditation to bring increased calm and focus to our mind and body. Starting with the bodies we have right now, we breathe and move in a safe and supported way that slowly builds our balance, flexibility, and inner awareness.
While this style of yoga can improve fitness, it differs from strong, physical "exercise yoga." It is a different practice with different goals - to build awareness, develop greater calm, and deepen self-understanding.
Slow, mindful yoga can help you:
develop internal and external awareness of your body
develop greater strength and balance
learn how to "tend and befriend" your body, mind, and spirit
develop a healthier relationship with stress
improve your sleep
It can be adapted to your specific needs, helping you support your health. We move in easeful ways within ranges that are comfortable and possible. There is something for everyone in slow, mindful yoga because it incorporates aspects of the health of our body, mind, and spirit in a compassionate, supportive way - meeting you where you are each time you practice and whatever form your practice takes each time.
I offer both mat-based and chair-based classes. Both approaches are based on the principles described here, so chair-based yoga can be just as effective and nourishing as mat-based yoga. While it's important to practice our skills of getting down to and up off the floor as we age, it's also important to choose a practice that works for us. For some of us, that's using a chair for support. Even in our chair-based practices, we do many (optional) standing moves and poses. It's important to do standing poses so we can maintain our skills of strength, flexibility, and balance.
When you decide to regularly practice slow, mindful yoga, you are doing something great for yourself that is informed by a growing body of research and also has roots in ancient yoga teachings supporting health and well-being.
If you are a breathing human being, you can do yoga! Slow, mindful yoga is not about folding yourself into a pretzel or standing on your head. It's about using what you have, right now, to move your breath, body, mind, and spirit in a direction toward resilience, energy, and well-being. And it's about savoring slow.
I invite you to consider yoga by exploring the benefits of the slow, mindful approach!
Here's more information about what you'll experience in my class.