Dealbreaker

In recent asana and iRest® Yoga Nidra classes I have been very focused on the role that our core beliefs play in the paths our lives travel down and how we show up in our own lives and the world around us. In my quest to awaken students to their greatest potential through the examination […]

Dreamweaver

So…question for you: what would happen if we approached the events of our waking life as if we were observing a dream? There’s a meditation technique called Dream Yoga that requires tremendous discipline, study and isolation to prepare the practitioner to observe the illusion of his/her dream while in it. Much like Awareness in the iRest Yoga Nidra practice, Dream Yoga requires the practitioner to reside in the realm of the witnessing energy that animates each one of our bodies, allowing witnessing to be able to identify dreams as dreams and not reality.

Yoga City Break in Berlin, Germany AND Yoga Retreat in Bali, Indonesia

As you all know by now, I put a lot of planning and effort into organizing the City Breaks and Retreats that I give annually, and so it won’t come as a surprise to any of you to find out that 2014’s journeys are already planned! I figured I’d give you all as much time to plan and budget as possible, and so here we go!

Tales From Out West

I’m in Calgary this week and thought I’d get down some of my thoughts…I came here to not only visit my brother and his wife and kids (one of which I’m meeting for the first time since his birth on Christmas Day), but to bring my Introduction to Hindu & Yogic Mythology workshop to a […]

Full Circle

My yoga practice started in 1999 when I found my guru living directly across the street from me. Joan Ruvinsky introduced me to my first yoga classes, which incorporated everything from inspirational discussions at the start of class to the most illuminating of approaches to the practice, including Body Sensing and Yoga Nidra. What really resounded with me were the Yoga Nidra sessions where we would lie down in Savasana after making ourselves as comfortable as possible with pillows, bolsters and blankets, and then allow our bodies to fall asleep while our minds stayed alert and focused on the teacher’s voice as she guided us through a meditation. Yoga Nidra is often defined as “yogic sleep”, and the whole exercise consists of letting the body relax and let go while conditioning the mind to not do the same. Every Yoga Nidra experience I have ever had has felt like an awakening, a realization of something I had always suspected was true, but had never encountered. Joan first introduced me to the experience, and her classes were beacons of peace for me when things were volatile in my life, and she gave me the yogic platform from which I have bounded off of in search of all things yoga.