Savasana

Nada Nidra: The Adventure of a Lifetime

Nada Nidra: The Adventure of a Lifetime

annejones / Events, Meditation, Reviews / , , , , , , , , , , , , , / 0 Comment

One rarely expects to go to a yoga class and not move at all. But during Yoga Nidra, that is almost exactly what happens.

One Yoga for the People hosted Nada Nidra: The Adventure of a Lifetime Friday night.

At first read, “The adventure of a lifetime” sounds a bit dramatic, but after experiencing Nada and Nidra yogic techniques, one really feels as though they have been on an internal adventure. Yoga Nidra is an empowering practice that guides you towards living in the moment. Heather Eschuk led the ancient Nidra practice, which was complimented by Mike Nichols’ chimes, crystal and Tibetan singing bowls.

The practice began with a beautiful sea of Oms. In a hot room full of so many voices, it was a lovely sound and a nice opportunity to explore the sound of your own Om without judgment. Before class began, Mike advised students that some people can find the sound of the bowls a bit intense; and that participants are welcome to cover their ears or lie on their side. He and Heather also mentioned that students are welcome to move during the Yoga Nidra if they feel the need, which was nice to know.

Mike began the class with a few Yin poses – Caterpillar, pigeon, a little self-jaw-massage, some supported bridge pose and gentle twists – to the sound of the bowls, which helped to bring the attention deep into the body. After this, Heather began to pilot us through the Yoga Nidra experience, which took about 50 minutes. Everybody spent most of the Yoga Nidra in a physical Savasana. Towards the end, as students became more awake and restless, we were encouraged to practice some gentle postures.

Towards the end of the practice, Heather summed up the experience of Yoga Nidra perfectly by calling it: “presence in your own innate wellbeing.”

Check out Heather’s website: www.heathereschuk.com. Mike teaches at Shine Yoga in Vancouver.

Floating Through The Practiced Storm

Melina Lake / Reflections, Tips, Yogis / , , , / 2 Comments

Savasana. The pose of all poses. You rise from your deep, calm, refreshed state with an increased positivity and gratitude towards life. You steadily prepare to face the outside world, bringing with you the qualities enhanced during class. Before you can collect your things and gather your thoughts to go on your merry way, the entrance is flooded.

Fellow yoginis, desperately anxious to find peace and start their practice, rush to the crowded cubicles and still occupied mats. You and others in a successful tranquilized state are bombarded with questions as to whether you’re coming or going. Your peace is interrupted, but you try hard to hang onto it as you dodge the incoming traffic and make your way out of class.

Doesn’t this abrupt behaviour confuse our purpose in going to yoga? The practice in breathing through discomfort and applying it to our daily lives. Being calmly present to deal with temporary strain.

So why not breathe through the discomfort of not getting our usual spot in class? Or the hurry to place our belongings in the cubicle closest to the exit? Or the anxious need to achieve ten full minutes of happy baby before class begins? How about respecting our community, our Kula, to help enhance its practice rather than suspend it.

We’ll all eventually arrive on our mats and begin our practice our way, moving to accommodate our bodies’ needs. Once class is finished, the positive energy we leave with is not determined by how strategic we were before class started.

So let’s face this challenge, despite how badly we need our next class. Let’s incorporate the strength, compassion, and integrity we learn from yoga and ensure its carried forward once we enter our yoga community. So when we exit class, we stay afloat rather than being forced to sink.

Danielle Hoogenboom

James / Reviews, Styles, Teachers / , , , / 1 Comment

I’ve only started taking Danielle’s classes in the last month or so. Since the departure of one my favourite instructors (Violetta Pioro) I’ve been searching for another mellow soul to fill the void. Danielle’s hatha classes function more like yin than anything, and I personally couldn’t have been more thrilled. The postures and the transitions she fields are slow and soft, and such methods are important to balance out those hardcore classes. Taking power everyday isn’t a bad thing as long as one knows to find slower and gentler classes for balance.

Danielle is soft-spoken, with a hint of lisp, and packs her dreads around like they’re clouds that float her around. Before each class she sifts around the room, asking every yogi if they have any injuries or any postures that they’d personally like to go into. I like the fact that almost all instructors ask their classes for requests, but Danielle’s one by one inquiries seem rare to me. For those that may wonder, I normally ask for twists.

I do have to say that her slow hatha classes are exceptionally effective. It’s only in her classes that I’ve caught myself at the beginning of a snore, twice, during heart-openers and such. It got to that point after she came by and lifted my chest even higher as I was lying on a bolster for Savasana; with everything supported and opened I guess my insides just melted outright. I distinctly remember one night that I relaxed so much I actually didn’t remember who I was, where I was, and how to drive home for about 10mins after the end of class.

www.lovelightyoga.com

Many of the postures in her classes are seated or in low lunges and I haven’t done any crazy inversions or arm balances with her yet. It’s a welcome change of pace after hitting up Anila and Liv’s power classes (of whom I will talk about in a few weeks) as my muscles could really use some laziness. I always get thrown off by powerful/aggressive instructors in slow classes since their strong voices seem to push me faster and further, but Danielle’s demeanor matches her class style perfectly to turn everything down.

She likes to explain every step, though always with a lull that really gets you to move the same way: slowly. Sometimes we all get caught up in the flow of a class and we really do forget to be aware. Her speed makes it so that there’s really no way to not realize the exclamations of the body. Since her movements aren’t sharp, and in our tendencies to match the instructors, the whole class claws around. I was still enough at the end of one class to end it in a sitting meditation. She later came up and said that she could see from my eyes that I had disconnected and rebooted. I didn’t deny it since it did indeed feel like that.

She has a way of making one feel like that they’re in the clouds with her, just swaying around shifting along with the vapours themselves. Like most instructors she offers food for thought, though she normally talks about the interplay between what we see to what we feel. It’s a bit different than taking a snippet from a yoga text and transposing it, rather drawing very clear lines to connect different aspects of our life.

From what I know she lives on Commercial Drive, has a roommate that digs astrological spiritualism, and sports her staple dreadlocks all the time. She even joked at how she seemed stereotypical to herself, which she then said wasn’t too far off the mark if her roommates didn’t rub off on her so much. She has her own sites, Danielle Hoogenboom and Lovelight, and teaches at Unity Yoga Tea House and YYoga.

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