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Very grateful and honored to have shared Yoga with Aguanga and Anza for the past 8 months and thrilled to want to stay on ‘til our last breaths! Thank you!! ♥!!! It’s been Awesome so far! Hubby and I moved here almost 3 years ago and we’re feeling energized and enthusiastic about this adventure! Yoga has kept us healthy and feeling invigorated for 20+ years and now, we’re over the moon to have given ourselves over to teaching! Call, text or email if you’re interested in the least! ♥!!! The 10AM Hamilton Museum Saturday Restorative classes have been wonderful out on the gorgeous lawn and under the big, old trees! Our students there range from age 10 to 92 and everyone has expressed experiencing major positive changes. YAAYYY! ♥!!! As the weather cools, we’ll move the Saturday morning class over to the very comfy Gregoire Combatives Martial Arts Studio! The cushy tatami mats there makes us all swoon! At that time, we’ll be adding a few new classes! Maybe a kids class, a class for teens, a yoga-for-dudes, an intro-to-yoga and/or a yin class. Please message us with preferred days and times and we’ll do our very best to accommodate! Thank you to everyone who are a part of the current Restorative, Yoga One and private classes! The progress shared is truly joyous and astounding! Here’s to your well-being! Mind and Body! Thank you for the opportunity! ♥!!! Tonight and every Monday night, there’s Restorative Yoga at 6:30pm and a Yoga One class at 7:45pm at Gregoire Combatives. Please join us for a few laughs and a bit of stretching! Happy to take GREAT care of you! All props are provided, classes are 100% secular and cost $10! Unlimited monthly program coming soon! I’ll post any and all updated info, as it’s being scheduled! Thank you again, ALL! ♥!!!! Yours, Val and Roni. From the American Osteopathic Association: The Benefits of Yoga Developed in India thousands of years ago, yoga has become an increasingly popular form of exercise in the United States. Whether yoga’s recent rise in popularity stems from an increase in stress levels or the following of a Hollywood trend, yoga delivers many benefits to those who incorporate it into their everyday lives.
“Yoga is a healing system of theory and practice. The purpose of yoga is to create strength, awareness and harmony in both the mind and body,” explains Natalie Nevins, DO, a board-certified osteopathic family physician and certified Kundalini Yoga instructor in Hollywood, California. “As an osteopathic physician, I focus a lot of my efforts on preventive medicine and practices, and in the body’s ability to heal itself. Yoga is a great tool for staying healthy because it is based on similar principles.” While there are more than one hundred different types, or schools, of yoga, most sessions are typically comprised of breathing exercises, meditation, and assuming postures (sometimes called asana or poses) that stretch and flex various muscle groups. Benefits of Yoga“The relaxation techniques incorporated in yoga can lessen chronic pain, such as lower back pain, arthritis, headaches and carpal tunnel syndrome,” explains Dr. Nevins. “Yoga can also lower blood pressure and reduce insomnia.” According to Dr. Nevins, other physical benefits include:
Unlike more traditional forms of exercise, yoga’s incorporation of meditation and breathing help a person improve his/her mental well-being. “Regular yoga practice creates mental clarity and calmness; increases body awareness; relieves chronic stress patterns; relaxes the mind; centers attention; and sharpens concentration,” says Dr. Nevins. Body and self-awareness, in particular, are very beneficial, adds Dr. Nevins, “because it can help with early detection of physical problems or ailments and allow for early preventive action.” Because there are so many different kinds of yoga practices, it is possible for anyone to start. “Whether you’re a couch potato or a professional athlete, size and fitness levels do not matter because there are modifications for every yoga pose and beginner classes in every style,” says Dr. Nevins. “The idea is to explore your limits, not strive for some pretzel-like perfection.” Yoga can be practiced to enhance overall health, to improve balance, to heal and prevent injuries, to strengthen muscles and to open the body for meditation. “It is a great way to get in tune with your body and your inner self,” says Dr. Nevins. Yoga's increasing popularity is proof that many people value an exercise system that engages the mind, body and spirit in equal measure. If you've never done yoga before, give it a try and see what it can do for you. Yogis with arthritis had better physical health, less joint pain and less depression
Exercise works all kinds of wonders on the human body, from stabilizing joints to improving muscle mass to reducing inflammation. That’s pretty motivating when your body feels good—but less so when it aches. 44% of people with arthritis say they don’t exercise, and close to 80% aren’t active enough. But a recent randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Rheumatology finds that people with arthritis who practice yoga can reap impressive physical and mental benefits. Those who practiced yoga three times a week had an improvement in pain levels, energy, mood and physical health compared to the group that didn’t do yoga—and the effects lasted even nine months later. “There’s kind of a myth that says if you have arthritis, the good thing to do is to rest your joints,” says one of the study’s authors Dr. Clifton O. Bingham III, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center. “I think the study is more evidence that, in fact, that’s not true.” In the trial, the researchers recruited 75 adults who didn’t exercise and had rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that affects the body’s smaller joints like the wrists, feet and ankles, or knee osteoarthritis, which is localized to the knee. One group practiced a specialized kind of yoga for eight weeks: group classes modified by arthritis experts to take the stress off of joints. Each hour-long class took place twice a week, and the people in the group were told to do a weekly class at home. The other group exercised as usual. After eight weeks, the people in the yoga group saw improvement across all measures compared to the control group. Their physical health, flexibility, pain levels, walking capacity and depression scores were better. The benefits lasted nine months later, when researchers checked up on them again. Some of the people in the yoga group are Bingham’s patients and still doing yoga five-plus years later, he says. “It really has been transformative for a lot of my patients,” he says. “What [one patient] learned from the yoga experience was the philosophy of non-harming and the idea that where she is today is good enough,” Bingham says. “Those types of things are very difficult to measure in terms of an outcome from a study, but we certainly saw them on a real one-on-one patient level.” Not every yoga class is safe for people with arthritis, Bingham says, and he advises people to consult with their arthritis specialist before starting. It’s important to also ask the yoga teacher if they have experience dealing with the disability, he says. Gentle yoga, prenatal yoga or classes designed for an older or disabled population are good places to start. The results of the study suggest that gentle yoga can be a safe practice for people with arthritis, and that it doesn’t make symptoms worse—in fact, quite the opposite.
Yoga: Fight Stress and Find Serenity
Is yoga right for you? It is if you want to fight stress, get fit and stay healthy. By Mayo Clinic Staff Your mobile phone is ringing, your boss wants to talk to you and your partner wants to know what's for dinner. Stress and anxiety are everywhere. If they're getting the best of you, you might want to hit the mat and give yoga a try. Yoga is a mind-body practice that combines stretching exercises, controlled breathing and relaxation. Yoga can help reduce stress, lower blood pressure and improve heart function. And almost anyone can do it. Understanding yoga Yoga is considered a mind-body type of complementary and alternative medicine practice. Yoga brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety. Yoga has many styles, forms and intensities. Hatha yoga, in particular, may be a good choice for stress management. Hatha is one of the most common styles of yoga, and beginners may like its slower pace and easier movements. But most people can benefit from any style of yoga — it's all about your personal preferences. The core components of hatha yoga and most general yoga classes are:
The health benefits of yoga The potential health benefits of yoga include:
Self-Kindness: 7 Habits That Will Help You Live a Happier Life
by Henrik Edberg "Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” Henry James “Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Mother Teresa No relationship in the world is more important than the one you have with yourself. But still, people often have a far worse and far more destructive relationship with themselves than they have with other people. So in this article I’d like to explore 7 habits that can help you to form a better and happier relationship with yourself. And as an extension of that probably better relationships with the people around you too. 1. Talk to yourself before you drag yourself down. We all have an inner critic. The critic can spur you on to get things done and to behave in way that gains acceptance from the people around you. But it can also drag you and your self-esteem down. The inner critic whispers or shouts destructive thoughts in your mind. It could be thoughts like:
Simply create a stop word or stop-phrase that you say or shout in your mind whenever your critic pipes up with a distorted and self-esteem hurting thought. Simply say: Stop! Or use something else. I like this phrase:
They have worked well for me to get the inner critic to shut up. Try these ones out or create one that feels good and works for you. Then use it to not get dragged down by your own inner critic when it may get triggered by for example criticism or a mistake in everyday life. And as you use the word or phrase and it becomes a habit and as you find healthier paths towards what you want your critic will pop up less and less. 2. Find a balance between yourself and your world. Some people tend to focus a little too much on the outside world. They try to help the people there and be of service at the expense of their own lives and mental and physical health. Others tend to focus too much on their own thoughts and what is happening inside of their heads. And so much over-analyzing is done and beliefs that everyone cares more than they do about what you do are formed and strengthened. The solution here is to find a bit more balance. If you tear yourself apart and are not very kind to yourself in order to serve others people then take a step back. Take time for yourself and say no to some commitments so that you have more time and energy for yourself. It is not selfish to take time for yourself too, we all need balance in life and to better be able to help others you need to help yourself too. Otherwise you’ll feel worse and worse as time passes and you’ll be of less and less help to others. If you tend to get lost in your own thoughts too much and in overanalyzing, then learn to simplify your thinking as I described in this previous post. And remember: people do not care that much about what you do. They are busy with their own projects and challenges and with worrying about what other people may be thinking of them. 3. Cultivate a healthy motivation habit. Why does destructive self-talk thrive and continue? Well, because it has some upsides too. For example, by calling yourself various things, by beating yourself up you can spur yourself on to get things done and to keep going towards your goals. But this way of motivating yourself is also destructive to your self-esteem and can make the path and journey towards the goal a lot heavier, less exciting and unhappier than it needs to be. And that is big problem since we spend most of our days on that journey. So give yourself a break. Be kinder to yourself and talk back to yourself when those destructive thoughts pop up to spur you on. And find other, more healthy ways to stay motivated. Some examples of that would be:
I sometimes hear that you should always be positive or always be winning or working towards your goal. That may sound inspirational in theory. But reality is not ideal or perfect and neither are you and I. Life gets in the way sometimes. You may get in your own way. And sometimes you simply don’t have the energy or the courage or the time to do something. And that is OK. Instead of trying to live up to some perfect image that other people and/or you may press upon you, choose to set human standards for yourself. Choose to give yourself a break when things don’t go as you may have wished and choose to cut yourself some slack. Instead of beating yourself up mercilessly. One approach that works for me is to think more in percentages than absolutes and to set the bar for yourself a little higher than it is now. For example, aim at being optimistic roughly 75% of the time if you are optimistic 50% of the time now. Aim at taking action on your thoughts 60% of the time. Then raise the bar slowly over time – but not all the way to 100% – to both be able to improve and to be able to be kind to yourself. And accept that you will make mistakes or have temporary failures a certain percentage of the time. Such is life. But of course learn from those things and avoid making the same mistakes over and over. 5. Change your input to things that are kind and constructive. Destructive messages from the people around you or from people further away such as media, advertising and society in general does not help you to be kind to yourself. So, bit by bit, replace them with other daily and weekly input. It could be the encouragement of friends and family and the help from someone close who has been in a situation that you are in now. It could be practical personal development books and blogs that helps you out with real solutions to the challenges you face and the goals you want to achieve. It could be spending more time in nature and in silence to relax and recharge yourself. Make more conscious choices about what you want flowing into your mind instead of just going along with same old habits. 6. Find what works for you. We are not all the same and we have different needs. It is important to find what works for you to be able to be kinder to yourself. This blog or I do not have all the answers. Obviously. So explore other books and blogs too to find the solutions you really need. Explore various options and try different strategies to find something that really fits you. 7. Know why it is the smart choice to be kind to yourself and remind yourself of that regularly. By knowing the reasons why it is smart to be kinder to yourself it, in my experience, becomes easier to be kind to yourself. It becomes easier to stop attacks from your inner critic by telling it that what it says is not a good way to motivate oneself. And it becomes easier to simply dismiss what the critic is saying. By reminding yourself of the reasons such as better real-life results, more perseverance, higher self-esteem, more inner happiness and stillness, more positive relationships with yourself and other people it becomes easier to stay kind to yourself through life’s natural ups and downs. By Chef Blaine Tacker, Natural Gourmet Institute, Courtesy of This green--better known as a garden weed—has a nutrition profile capable of competing with the best superfoods. Purslane is better known as a garden weed (wait, wait! Don’t click away!), but it has a superfood nutrition profile up there with the best of them. Its succulent-like leaves are hydrating and pack an extraordinary amount of Omega-3 fatty acids compared to other plants, making it highly anti-inflammatory and nourishing to the entire body. In this salad, tiny purslane is bulked up with baby mache and cucumber, and then tossed with the most basic yet perfectly bright and addictive vinaigrette to highlight the greens (the buttery-rich flax oil doubles down on the Omegas, too). Take this salad into substantial meal territory by adding your favorite vegetables and legumes or another protein. Look for purslane at your local farmers markets, natural food stores, or ask a gardener to take those healthy weeds off their hands. Recipe: Purslane-Cucumber Salad with Omega Vinaigrette MAKES 4 SALAD SERVINGS + 1/3 CUP VINAIGRETTE Ingredients:
Very excited to announce that I’m starting a weekly Children’s Yoga class, next Saturday, August 8th, at 11:30AM –also on the museum's fun and squishy lawn! Donation is by sliding scale. Pay what you can afford. I loved teaching Kid’s Yoga at Sage Yoga Studios in Fallbrook and I’ve missed it! Classes are 1 hour and 100% secular. The first half of the class is spent practicing breathing techniques and yoga poses, the second half of the class is given over to arts and crafts. If students prefer more yoga over crafts or vice versa, I’m happy and flexible to serve each child’s preference and level. Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite yoga for kids articles. The Benefits of Yoga for Kids By Marsha Wenig Our children live in a hurry-up world of busy parents, school pressures, incessant lessons, video games, malls, and competitive sports. We usually don’t think of these influences as stressful for our kids, but often they are. The bustling pace of our children’s lives can have a profound effect on their innate joy—and usually not for the better. I have found that yoga can help counter these pressures. When children learn techniques for self-health, relaxation, and inner fulfillment, they can navigate life’s challenges with a little more ease. Yoga at an early age encourages self-esteem and body awareness with a physical activity that’s noncompetitive. Fostering cooperation and compassion—instead of opposition—is a great gift to give our children. Children derive enormous benefits from yoga. Physically, it enhances their flexibility, strength, coordination, and body awareness. In addition, their concentration and sense of calmness and relaxation improves. Doing yoga, children exercise, play, connect more deeply with the inner self, and develop an intimate relationship with the natural world that surrounds them. Yoga brings that marvelous inner light that all children have to the surface. When yogis developed the asanas many thousands of years ago, they still lived close to the natural world and used animals and plants for inspiration—the sting of a scorpion, the grace of a swan, the grounded stature of a tree. When children imitate the movements and sounds of nature, they have a chance to get inside another being and imagine taking on its qualities. When they assume the pose of the lion for example, they experience not only the power and behavior of the lion, but also their own sense of power: when to be aggressive, when to retreat. The physical movements introduce kids to yoga’s true meaning: union, expression, and honor for oneself and one’s part in the delicate web of life. A Child’s Way Yoga with children offers many possibilities to exchange wisdom, share good times, and lay the foundation for a lifelong practice that will continue to deepen. All that’s needed is a little flexibility on the adult’s part because, as I quickly found out when I first started teaching the practice to preschoolers, yoga for children is quite different than yoga for adults. Six years ago, I had my first experience teaching yoga to kids at a local Montessori school. I looked forward to the opportunity with confidence—after all, I’d been teaching yoga to adults for quite a while, had two young children of my own, and had taught creative writing for several years in various Los Angeles schools. But after two classes with a group of 3 to 6-year-olds, I had to seriously reevaluate my approach. I needed to learn to let go (the very practice I had been preaching for years) of my agenda and my expectations of what yoga is and is not. When I began to honor the children’s innate intelligence and tune in to how they were instructing me to instruct them, we began to co-create our classes. We used the yoga asanas as a springboard for exploration of many other areas—animal adaptations and behavior, music and playing instruments, storytelling, drawing—and our time together became a truly interdisciplinary approach to learning. Together we wove stories with our bodies and minds in a flow that could only happen in child’s play. The kids began to call me Mrs. Yoga, and I called them Yoga Kids. We continued to work and play together until our creations bloomed into a program called YogaKids. The program combines yogic techniques designed especially for children using Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner, an author and professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, describes eight intelligences innate in all of us—linguistic, logical, visual, musical, kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal—and emphasizes that children should be given the opportunity to develop and embody as many of these as possible. In keeping with this theory, YogaKids integrates storytelling, games, music, language, and other arts into a complete curriculum that engages the “whole child.” We employ ecology, anatomy, nutrition, and life lessons that echo yogic principles of interdependence, oneness, and fun. Most of all, our program engages the entire mind, body, and spirit in a way that honors all the ways children learn. :-D GOOD Afternoon! Hope this finds you having a wonderful Sunday! <3 Tomorrow will be our one month anniversary at Gregoire Combatives and we're honored and thrilled with the response! Woooooo! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts! :-D Steven Gregoire is an absolute gentleman and a pleasure to work with and we can't wait to add more classes to the schedule! We're thinking of a yoga flow class, a yoga one class and maybe a yoga for dudes class! Please share any and all feedback with us! We greatly appreciate it! See you tomorrow at 6:30pm! Can't wait! Lots of love, Val XO <3 <3 <3 The Kind Of Yoga People Google The Most If you've ever been curious about restorative yoga--Do you really just lay there?—you're in good company: A recent Google Trends report shows the number of searches for "restorative yoga sequence" has risen 120%. This could be because it's a more approachable form of yoga, says Jason Wachob, founder of wellness website MindBodyGreen.com. "Even though 20 million-plus people practice yoga in the US, there is often a perception that you need to be super-flexible or strong enough to do arm balances. But with restorative yoga, people don't feel like they're walking into something that they can't do," he says. If you've never experienced it, restorative yoga aims to relax a person physically, mentally, and emotionally. Holding certain positions, like corpse pose, for minutes at a time on pillows and blankets helps a person better connect with their breath, says Wendi Buick, a certified yoga instructor based in Colorado. "A powerful yoga class is awesome. But to find the time to sit back and put your feet up, to ground yourself and find mental peace [during a restorative sequence] is amazing." Not only that, adds personal trainer Holly Del Rosso, but someone who works out four to five times a week needs to relax and stretch their tight muscles. Skipping this step may lead to injury, she says. Adding a restorative yoga class to your weekly routine helps insure this doesn't occur. Plus, there's another benefit: Restorative yoga can help women burn belly fat, according to research presented at the 73rd Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association last year. Overweight women who tried the practice for six months lost two and a half times more belly fat than women who just did basic stretching. Bottom line: Restorative yoga is worth the time. says Buick, "...where is that moment where you connect with who you are? Taking that moment to step back can show you just how strong and powerful you are." GOOD DAY TO YOU! :-) Hope this finds you doing very well! <3 Our theme of the past two weeks in yoga class has been gratitude. We learned about different research studies on gratitude, how gratitude benefits various parts of our lives, we practiced breathing with gratitude, and wrote a list of things we were grateful for, in between poses. I find the power of gratitude to be very strong. Gratitude has been my partner throughout life since listening to an Anthony Robbins tape at the age of 16. I was looking for answers and found them within. I have since kept a gratitude journal and my life’s journey, so far, has been GREAT! Not because it has been without fear and strife but because gratitude had become a tool to see each moment, no matter what the circumstances, as an opportunity to learn and grow. I encourage you to please take the time to start a gratitude journal. Just 3 things a day you’re grateful for. Try it for a week or two and see how it makes you feel. I could go on and on but instead I’ll share with you one of my favorite, quickie articles on the subject. Sending you infinite love, great peace and a world of gratitude! Hope this adds wellness to your life! Hope to see you in class! :-) <3, Val XO A Dose of Gratitude: How Being Thankful Can Keep You Healthy
Written by Robin Madell Medically Reviewed by George Krucik, MD. Published on Healthline.com Studies show that people who regularly practice giving thanks are happier. What if there was a solution to stress so simple that it involved nothing more than feeling thankful for the good things in your life? In fact, there is. That solution is called gratitude. Studies have shown that people who regularly practice feeling thankful have a leg up when it comes to their health. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, has been a leading researcher in this growing field, termed “positive psychology.” His research has found that those who adopt an “attitude of gratitude” as a permanent state of mind experience many health benefits. Emmons’ findings, along with those from other researchers such as Lisa Aspinwall, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, suggest that grateful people may be more likely to:
With that list of benefits, who wouldn’t want to try it? To get started giving thanks, consider integrating some of the steps below into your daily life. Focus Attention Outward Your attitude plays a large role in determining whether you can feel grateful in spite of life’s challenges. According to Emmons, gratitude is defined by your attitude towards both the outside world and yourself. He suggests that those who are more aware of the positives in their lives tend to focus their attention outside of themselves. Be Mindful of What You Have You may assume that those with more material possessions have more to be grateful for. However, research suggests otherwise. Edward Diener, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois, found that a high percentage of affluent people in Japan report low levels of life satisfaction, just as those living in poverty in India do. These findings suggest that it’s not how much you have, but how you feel about what you have that makes the difference. Keep a Gratitude Journal Recording what you feel grateful for in a journal is a great way to give thanks on a regular basis. Emmons found that those who listed five things they felt grateful for in a weekly gratitude journal reported fewer health problems and greater optimism than those who didn’t. A second study suggests that daily writing led to a greater increase in gratitude than weekly writing. Reframe Situations as Positive It’s not actually a challenging situation that is upsetting. It’s how you perceive the situation. The next time you find yourself complaining about life’s hassles, see if you can mentally “flip the switch” to frame things differently. For example, rather than getting down about missing an opportunity, try to see the positive side. You might now have more time to direct towards other priorities.
Awesome display from the skies!
( Shot from our house.) |
AuthorYOGA SKIES Archives
January 2020
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