When we shut out our internal voice.....

It has been an interesting week-professionally and personally. The ramifications of organizational change at my professional work environment has created immense stress and discomfort among my colleagues. We all have different methodologies of dealing with the results of change-this week I found myself more meditative as I reflected on dealing with changes in my external environment.

Some changes are outside the realm of our control, however our reaction to them is within our control. Sometimes it is easy to forget this and get caught up in our internal reactions to external factors. We shut down that internal voice telling us to breathe and allow the external noise to clutter our thoughts, create stress and begin a process that increases our stress hormones; allows the effects of stress to be deposited into storage areas such as our hips, shoulders, back. We begin to feel totally disconnected with our internal environment-how we really feel. I have noticed when I am fighting releasing stress-opening that door while in an asana such as pigeon and letting go brings up some emotions I really don't want to acknowledge-as my kids would say"yuk".

This week we have been using the sound of "ha" to release stress-simple and straightforward. Inhale-exhale slowly through your mouth to the sound of ha-that's it. Open the door and let go of your stress-be amazed at what you will learn about yourself.

I have always enjoyed receiving feedback on the classes at the studio, particularly from newbies to yoga. This week, my favourite quote from a delightful individual was "don't laugh, but I thought yoga was about sitting around and humming". I hear this alot! The other common statement"I tried yoga once and didn't like it". My response is normally "If you tried vanilla ice-cream once and didn't like it, would it stop you from eating vanilla ice cream again?"

Yoga teachers are all very unique in their approach and with so many styles of yoga and types of classes, it can get confusing in choosing what class is best suited to you. Call the studio, ask if you can take a few different classes with different teachers to see what will resonate with you. Don't stop eating vanilla ice cream because you tried french vanilla and you didn't like it!!

This week at the studio....April 24-30

Saturday morning's Yoga Flow-yoga for energy. Zumba, it is the last week for this set, when I return next Saturday, we have a whole new set. The conditioning class-core, CORE, CORE...

Sunday's hot power yoga-yoga for the 3rd chakra.

Energize! Rev up your morning

Mountain pose
Rag doll
Mountain pose
1/2 way lift
Foward fold
1/2 way lift
Chair pose-flow into 1/2 way lift with airplane arms
Chair
Mountain
Repeat

Again I am away from Monday to Friday (April 26-29) so if I do not see you tomorrow, have a great week!