Welcome to our last month of Winter! Soon we will be swapping our jackets for our swimmers, so what better incentive than to take an extra class to tone up those winter pounds. As it becomes easier to drag ourselves from our warm blankets, don't forget there is an early class every week day at 7am, with the exception of Tuesday, which now starts at 6.30am for the early birds. As our studio grows in numbers, the early classes are becoming the only classes where you can share with maybe just one or two others. Please check the schedule as the summer approaches for other time changes to align with the length of day light. Also please note that Wednesday's 6.30pm Vinyasa class will not take place from 20/08 to 10/09, resuming 17/09. This is due to four weeks of training for my bronze medallion for the Mooloolaba Surf Club. Let's see if I can wrangle a few of the lifesavers down to a class!
Enough housekeeping, let's move on to a social note. Ecolife Chiro is celebrating it's 1st birthday on Friday, Sept 5th, at the clinic. Please stop by to pick up more information about this huge event. I would love to have a large yoga contingent, so please bring other halves, friends, and children along. By all accounts, the opening last year was pretty big. The event will be followed up with another exclusive party, Saturday, Sept 6th, a first for the Coast. A Brain child of Howard our Chiro, Yoga Vida and Ecolife are joining up with Brett Mills of Toyota, to create an exclusive invitation party to be held once every three months. Our first venue is Zachary's Mooloolaba, and to find more information please stay tuned to www.whosunshinecoast.com. Will be a great weekend, so pin it on the calender, I hope to see you all there.
Now getting back to yoga for a moment. It really has been awesome to watch everyone progress with their practices over the last few months. This is really what makes my job so terrific, seeing people coming in with no confidence or balance, and then blossoming into their real selves. As our strength, balance, flexibility and coordination improves, so does our posture, well being and confidence. I was lucky enough to start teaching yoga to the students of Pacific Lutheran school during the last month, and this has also created much joy and experience for me. With some corporate work thrown in to the mix too, it has been a great month, and I am pleased to see that the yoga word is spreading throughout the community. With all your help we can continue to make a difference to the well being of our fellow Coasties.
Yoga pose of the month is Balancing Stick, or Tuladandasana in Sanskrit. Once again this month, I will provide a link for you to cut and paste into your browser to watch my teacher Jimmy work through the posture on You Tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhH85pXyXi8&feature=related You may have noticed that in some of our classes we do the pose with our arms out to the side like airplane wings. This is an easier variation which allows us to hold our balance easier while we develop depth in the posture. Once we move in to the final posture with arms straight out, you will notice that we hold only for about 10-20 seconds, as it requires tremendous shoulder strength and really increases the heart rate. If you have been practicing this way, then well done, your practice is advancing.
That's enough from me for this month. I hope you are all getting the most out of life and enjoying this wonderful environment in which we live. I hope to see you at a class soon.
