Free to Be Yoga

Daylight Savings ending means Wednesday 5 pm class will move online - contact us for the link.
Tuesday 1:30 pm class will continue at Heritage Park, as long as temps are above 32, with no rain or snow, or if it's not blowing like hell.

Yoga outside continues…as long as it is above 32, with no snow or rain. Tuesdays at 1:30 and Wednesdays at 5, Heritage Park. Thanks, Karen for the beautiful picture😊

Free to Be Yoga Mission: To create a friendly yoga space where every body is free to be who they are and to explore w

Put on a sweater and join us outside or try practicing in the comfort of your own home.
Contact [email protected] for more info.

Yoga Schedule for this week 8/29:
Wake Up Yoga via Zoom, 6:00 am Tues and Thurs
(Contact us for the link.)
Yoga Outside, 9:30 am Wednesday, Heritage Park

Photo by AARN GIRI on Unsplash

Summer Yoga! In person classes at Heritage Park, Wednesdays June 9-30, 4 - 5 pm. Wake Up Yoga, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6 am continues on Zoom.
Join us! Go to [email protected] to register.

Lizzie and I are offering a FREE live Restorative class led by me on May 26th. See you there! To sign up, go to www.judithhansonlasater.com/newsletter

Join me for a beautiful & inspiring FREE event with 40+ embodiment researchers & yoga facilitators in a live 5-day virtual summit, April 21st - 25th.

Explore how reconnecting with the body and learning to move with awareness can promote a deeper level of health, happiness and inner well-being than you ever thought possible.

I would love for you to come!

🔗 below 👇🏿 to learn more and sign up.
https://www.embodiedyogasummit.com/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Flearn.theembodylab.com%2Fa%2F46268%2FzEgkPDZu

Facebook Live with Yoga Expert Doug Keller! Dump the Slump: Optimal Spine Alignment and Why It Matters Join us for a Facebook Live with yoga therapist and author Doug Keller on Optimal Spine Alignment and Why It Matters this Tuesday, April 6 at 1 pm EDT/10 am PDT. If you struggle with text neck, shoulder pain and the beginning of forward head posture, or know someone who does, this talk is for you! T...

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Don’t get scared of set backs or of not seeing the change.

You can’t always see the seeds planted.

How We Can Use Karma Yoga to Uplift Our Communities No action is too small and we can all use yoga to instigate change.

MAY ASIAN AMERICANS BE SAFE AND PROTECTED

Safe and protected is a METTA phrase, now offered as a prayer for all Asian Americans.
After months of standing with a Black Lives Matter sign, I am so sad to be in the streets again. Asian and AAPI lives have been under attack from politicians and racists .... this must stop. It is painfully opposite of the Dharma teachings of the value, dignity and respect of every being.
Let us stand together. Let us truly value and protect Asian Americans, one another, and all on this precious globe.

Thanks to Jivana Heyman for sharing this.

Yoga for Patients Recovering from COVID-19 Infections on Sat, 3/6/21 11:00 AM from Give Back Yoga Foundation Hundreds of articles have been written on how to avoid contracting and transmitting COVID-19. Perhaps even more has been written about COVID-19 war...

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Some New Yoga Classes We’ve Added to the Schedule Yoga for Upper-Back Pain Brought on by Giving in to the Darkness, Yoga for When You Want to Feel Like a Cat, and many more courses.

Thank you Yoga Journal for publishing my article about “Making Yoga Accessible for All.” Check it out in their new issue. It includes an excerpt from my book as well as additional material just for yoga teachers.

(Image: 3 yoga journal magazines with one open to the article described above with an image of Jivana teaching)

Nia with Mary starts this Wednesday, February 3 at 8 am!
Nia is a holistic movement practice which blends elements from healing, dance and martial arts with 52 basic body movements using routines and free dancing to a variety of musical styles. Open to all levels and body types, it builds self-awareness to support healing, empowerment and creativity. Come join and experience the fun of building community without words.

I can’t be alone on this!?!

Who else rocks out of a yoga sesh feeling on fire!

Did you know some of the amazing benefits of laughter?!?
short term it can...
👉🏾 stimulate your heart, lung, muscles
👉🏾 relieve stress
👉🏾 soothe tension
And long term it can improve your immune system.

So try to find some laughter my wonderful friends! 💜
❤️

“It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality... Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.“ - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his last Christmas sermon

This

What is possible between us Art by Lisk Feng This week’s Pause is written by Krista: Dear Friends, I’ve always called myself...

So beautiful

Poem of the Week: Happy New Year, all! And here is a blessing for all of us:

A Blessing for the New Year
By John O’Donohue

Beannacht (the Bard’s blessing)
For Josie.

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

Photo: New Year's Day Sky, Limantour Beach, CA 2021

Check this out.

Hi! Jivana here. The newest co-hort of the Accessible Yoga Training begins in a few weeks. I want to extend an invitation for you to join us...

The Accessible Yoga Training was built on the basic idea of addressing ableism in yoga spaces. My background is in AIDS activism, and I became a yoga teacher with the intention of sharing yoga with people with AIDS and other disabilities. Over the years, I saw that yoga was moving in the opposite direction. As contemporary practice became obsessed with performance and physical prowess, I became obsessed with the idea of changing the way that yoga teachers are trained and trying to get them to think differently about asana and ability.

The Accessible Yoga Training originally started as a yoga therapy training in the 1990s. Back then yoga therapy was about making yoga accessible to people with disabilities and chronic illnesses as well as people who don’t feel comfortable in a regular yoga class. Over time that’s changed, and yoga therapy seems to be more about individualizing the practice for people, or integrating yoga into the Western medical system.

I found my work was going in the opposite direction. I was interested in making yoga available to the widest possible population. So rather than making yoga more focused, I wanted to make it broader and more available. For many years the training was over a hundred hours long, and about five years ago I realize that in order to reach more teachers I could consolidate it and really focus on the most essential elements. That’s how I came up with this thirty-hour version of the program.

My dream is that all yoga teachers are trained in these basic aspects of accessibility and equity so that anyone who comes to yoga feels welcome and included. That way we can join together in the unity that yoga teaches us.

Learn more: https://www.accessibleyogatraining.com/training
LINK IN BIO!

{image description: Jivana is pictured from the shoulders up in a dark shirt. ]

A Wise Woman...

One Atlanta-Based Yoga Teacher Shares Her Vision for What a Post-Coronavirus World Could Look Like As Georgia re-opens its economy, yoga studio owner Octavia Raheem implores us to stop scrambling to be productive in the way that mattered yesterday.

Happy New Year!
(Thanks for the poem, Kathy Daly)

In Memoriam - Ring out, Wild Bells
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

From Jack Kornfield

Dear Ones,
I invite you to revisit the pandemic resources on my website. I hope you will find them helpful as we navigate our way through the winter months.
May you be well in body and mind.
With metta,
Jack
http://ow.ly/9iPJ30qt3Ii

Pandemic Resources - Jack Kornfield Pandemic Resources Jack Kornfield on Mind & Life Podcast: Wisdom for our Times As 2020 draws to a close, Mind & Life Podcast host Wendy Hasenkamp and Jack discuss a wide range of topics, including: inks between Buddhism and psychology in terms of healing and self; the problem of spiritual bypassing;...