Beyond Asana Blog

A student in a recent retreat shared the following with me:

It was my first time attending a day dedicated to Yoga and the many forms of practice. Importantly, I understood that asanas are only one part of the yogic practice. This simple but powerful insight helped me understand that meditation, chanting, breathing, intention and visioning are part of a system.

Though we may chant in class, meditate, practice breathing exercises, it may not be obvious that postural practice is a part of a holistic system that involves and addresses all parts of oneself. 

If you’ve been attending class for sometime, you might have been doing this more than you think. A student in a recent...

Free Home Practice Guide! If you didn't already receive my new 16-page Home Yoga Practice Guide, you can DOWNLOAD IT HERE! It’s full of practical tips and suggestions to support your independent practice, and includes  a pose syllabus and practice sequences if you have 15, 30 60 minutes or more. I hope you enjoy it!

With all that's going on in our world, I thought I couldn't write about yoga this week. It felt superfluous and even self-indulgent to talk about practice amidst the tragedies we are dealing with these days. However, the truth is that yoga is precisely what allows me to build resilience in the face of struggle. Practice is...

“Only a few classes and my back pain is gone! I love yoga!”

“I’ve been meditating for just a couple of weeks and I’m already sleeping better. Amazing!”

“Learning to focus on my breathing has made a huge difference in how I deal with stress at work. Wow! Yoga really works!”

Yoga is powerful. It often doesn’t take long to feel its positive impact. Many of us have experienced shifts  - both small and large - pretty quickly. Fired up, we commit to making yoga a consistent part of our lives.

However, the pace of transformation doesn’t often continue at such a dramatic rate as these initial shifts. Yoga begins to feel dry and...

Recently, a student remarked to me after class,

“Thank you. This was exactly where I needed to be."

I suspect she was grateful not only to have placed herself in the practices on that particular day, but also to have done so in a space dedicated to yoga and nurturing the path of inner connection.
 I’ve always thought of neighbourhood studios not only as yoga schools, but just as fundamentally as community centers. Aside from being, hopefully, one of the last places where we are free from our devices for a little while, studios that encourage community are a kind of modern marketplace, where ideas are shared and connections are made. And even more...

The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity.

Bhagavad Gita Verses 2.23-25

Can you imagine what it would be like to be able to access this state of absolute independence?

Yoga practice draws us from outside in, from the periphery toward the center. It does this by directing our sense awareness, which usually moves outward to interact with the world around us, inside. As we sharpen a kinaesthetic sense of ourselves, we also become more sensitive to our breathing, energy, and the movements of our...

I was an archaeology major in university. Following graduation I set off to dig in Europe and the Middle East. Among the most exciting finds of my very limited time as an amateur excavator were: an ancient camel tooth, the remains of a Neolithic dog cemetery and a Bronze age clothing pin.

Our first days on the site were about surveying the land, taking baseline elevation measurements, getting to know the soil composition and making a general plan for excavation based on what was known about the history of the location we were digging.

Once the area had been mapped and gridlines set up we cleared way the initial layers of earth with pick axes, shovels and...