A student in one of my classes, relatively new in her yoga practice, was asking about more info for yoga – yoga beyond the asanas. So I went to my personal library looking for some wide scope, introductory texts. Here’s what I took off the shelf: Light on Life: the yoga journey to wholeness, inner peace, and ultimate freedom, by BKS Iyengar; The Heart of Yoga; developing a personal practice, by TKV Desikachar; and also thought of Integral Yoga Hatha, by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Wondering what readings lit the spark for others.
As the spring season evolves towards summer, our activities change and so too my yoga class offerings. My June series of classes will be a mixture of Zoom classes and one outside class – Under the Oaks.
For Salt Springers, Monday’s Every Body Yoga class will go outside Under the Oaks, in the Fulford Valley. All other classes, which includes: Mellow Morning Mondays, Chair Yoga Wednesdays, and Wednesday’s Every Body Yoga will be on Zoom.
Both of these avenues for offering yoga classes are the result of Covid-19. Last summer, after our initiation with Covid-19 and the lock downs and lock ins and separations from one another, getting outside to do yoga together was a gem. Yet so too was it a gem to be able to do yoga together on Zoom prior to the summer, and following. I am happy to be able to offer both.
Monday – Mellow Morning Yoga: starts June 7; 10 – 11 am PT; class series fee is $50 and includes 4live zoom classes from Ocean Song studio and access to the recordings for the duration of the series. The Zoom link is sent upon receipt of payment.
Monday – Every Body Yoga: starts June 7; 4:30 – 5:30 pm; outside, Under the Oaks, in the pastoral Fulford Valley. Payment is by donation (suggestion of $10 – 13/class). More details offered upon registration of interest.
Wednesday – Chair Yoga (3 – 4 pm PT) & Every Body Yoga (4:30 – 5:30 pm PT): starts June 2; running for 5 weeks. Class series fee is $65 and includes 5 live zoom classes from Ocean Song studio and access to the recordings for the duration of the series. The Zoom link is sent upon receipt of payment.
Payment is accepted by e-transfer (c.mcewen@shaw.ca), cash or cheque (Catherine McEwen).
Looking forward to sharing the nourishing benefits of yoga through movement, breath-work and sitting in silence. OM
Use the power of this transformational season of spring to reinvigorate, purify, strengthen, and empower yourself – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually though YOGA. Enliven your entire well being while harnessing the awakening power of spring. Use yoga to alleviate your gardening stressed muscles or tight runner’s or cyclists muscles; your desk posture or screen posture. Strengthen your muscles for your summer outdoor activities. With all the energy that spring awakens in us, be ready to move safely, steadfastedly or with abandon in the joy of spring. Moderate your breath and watch you mind quiet. Come into the place of stillness that is always there for us.
Join me for an 8-week series of yoga classes moving through the spring season. All online on Zoom while we patiently continue to stay safe from viral and variant spread. Be part of the online community. We are all in this together.
Classes starting March 22 and 24, Mondays and Wednesdays respectively. You can find more details here.
This winter season all yoga classes will be on Zoom.
An 8-week series – starting the week of Jan. 11 and running into the first week of March.
What’s on offer? Mondays and Wednesdays, classes for both Chair Yoga (3-4 pm) and Every Body Yoga (4:30 – 5:30 pm) twice weekly, and once weekly Mellow Morning Monday Yoga (10 – 11 am). The feeling behind offering twice-weekly classes in Chair and Every Body yoga is to offer you more benefit to your yoga practice. Research shows that to receive full benefits from a yoga or wellness/fitness program, we need to do the practice twice or 3X weekly. Once a week is good, 2 or 3X even better. Should this appeal to you, a discount on the fee is offered. Please refer to the Classes Page for full details. I hope to see you on the mat or in the chair.
During these unprecedented times, yoga can offer a calm within the chaos, a retreat within the self-isolation. When fears and anxiety arise, we can turn our attention to breath, and centre ourselves, finding calm. When thoughts race through our minds and compel us to move impossibly in multiple directions simultaneously creating stress and confusion, or freeze us from doing anything constructive, yoga can offer us ways for grounding with Mother Earth through asanas and rooting us in the moment through meditation. The mind is allowed to quiet. Awareness is. And in this stillness, the peace and joy of our true self is revealed.
Amma (India’s hugging saint) counsels us at this time that we are the light or the darkness on our own path, the flower or the thorn. Through courage and alertness we can remain on our path of light. Everything in the universe is interconnected into a community of one. And everything is an energy, a vibration. Through meditation, we quiet the mind, merge the mind with the heart, and rest in beingness – that stateless state of peace, joy, and contentment. Negative thoughts will create negative vibrations within our body and throughout the universe. Positive thoughts, ones of love and compassion, and universal truth, these will create positive vibrations – throughout our body and beyond – into our family, our community, our country, our world, Mother Earth, the universe. Amma has recommended us all to meditate daily, especially now in these times.
Ayurveda (the sister science of yoga and the traditional Hindu system of medicine), as well as western medicine, promote keeping a strong immune system for good health. Stress reduces our immunity. While we may not be able to avoid feeling stressed during these times, we can alleviate this by choosing to practice meditation, breathwork, and routine physical activities, such as yoga asanas. A strong immune system is also supported by eating healthy whole foods, drinking abundant water (herbal teas, fresh water), having a routine for sleep, taking supplements, choosing positive thoughts, and being the love that we are.
So for now, while yoga studios are closed, I am offering yoga classes on Zoom. All are welcome. (No constraints by studio size!). Go to the Classes page for class days and times. You’ll need the Zoom ID to join, so you’ll need to get in touch with me via email – see Contact.
Weekly Yoga in the ‘Hood classes resume at Ocean Song in October. Offering an 8-week series. Monday classes will run from Oct. 7 – Dec. 2. Wednesday classes will run from Oct. 9 – Nov. 27. Monday Morning Mellow classes also starting up. And Chair Yoga will no longer be at the Anderson Room of the OAPO and will run at Ocean Song on Wednesday afternoons. So a new location and a new day of the week for Chair Yoga classes.
I sang my heart out Friday evening, in family, in Unity, in Oneness. And I am full of gratitude for this opportunity and all it presented.
I was tipping my toes into the sweet waters of Amit Carmeli’s WildRoot Journey with his offering on Salt Spring Island in the sacred space of the yurt at Ram Spring Wellness Centre. We sang, not words or lyrics. We sang tones and rhythms of varying volumes following Amit’s lead. As we sang, the mind was stilled, and with it, ego absent, and the heart sang out. Spirit sang.
Silencing the mind is the quintessential practice for awakening that the sages and gurus point us to, for being as Spirit, for removing the veil that separates us from our true being. We can achieve this through many different means, like yoga asanas (poses), meditation, mantra, or being in flow while creating music or art. We enter into the realm of Spirit, which is not any place we go, yet with a silent mind, in stillness and silence, we recognize we are That – that which is love, compassion, kindness, acceptance, and wisdom. This evening following Amit’s lead and singing together, silenced the mind. We were the music.
Amit speaks of three awarenesses for us to acknowledge during our time together singing. The first awareness is of Awareness itself. Who or what is listening? I have also watched Deepak Chopra ask this question to a large audience, to establish themselves as, or connect with, Awareness, or Spirit. What is hearing, right now? What is aware of who is listening? For our night of singing together, we remain as Awareness of Amit’s voicing, in each moment, and for which we will echo, follow, dive into fully, rejoice fully, let go fully.
The second awareness is to soften the face. A familiar directive, as with meditation, or savasana (corpse pose in yoga). Soften the brow, relax the lower jaw, relax the tongue. Why soften the face? Because this is what we present to the material world. We look outward from our eyes and engage in “doing”. And because we wear our story on our face, or we work to mask our story on our face. By relaxing the face, softening the face, we let go, we surrender, we drop judgement. The whole body can relax when the face softens. And the nervous system calms down. And in this place, we can be more accepting of what presents, of all that may arise in the course of the music making with our voices in Unity.
Breath, in religious or spiritual context, means spirit, soul. As expressed in Genesis of the Bible’s Old Testament, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life‘ . The third awareness is on breath. That animating life force called prana, ruah, great spirit, divine consciousness – whatever one chooses to call this connection to the divine. Awareness on breath. There will be no doubt, at the evening’s close, that each singing voice was a reflection of its breath. That each singing voice was an expression of Spirit.
In the words of Amit Carmeli’s WildRoot Journey, ”Our voice is a clear and immediate reflection of who we are in each moment. Listening and sensing our voice while singing allows us to recognize our true state of being in each moment… we learn how to surrender to the Wild Root which allows our bodies to become musical vessels, revealing the unique music that we each simply are. The wild root stands for life’s energy – the source of creation in each human being. The key practice to the Wild Roots Journey is learning how to connect to this mysterious source as a neutral vessel.”
Singing together intimately as family,
Singing by the men to the women, singing with respect, honouring and love,
Singing by the women to the men, with full reference for their song of respect, honouring, and love – echoing it back to them,
Singing into rising crescendos, ecstatic as a sufi lover of god,
Singing softly as a lullaby to a baby, tenderly, lovingly,
Singing as family in an intimacy of blended voices, Oneness,
Singing as empty vessels alive with sound, drawn to tears of joy or tears of sadness, all in.
When it all came to a close, the middle eastern and western African rhythms of Amit’s guitar playing no longer punctuated the night air, and the singing stilled to silence. We spoke of gratitude, for it had been a sacred evening shared together as family, as Oneness. Mystical. And always, there is much to be grateful of. Namaste
“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love…” – Rainer Maria Rilke
Shared from Maria Popova’s weekly newsletter, BrainPickings , a most wonderful literate compilation of writings on human existence. In this week’s edition, she draws from Joanna Macy’s book on Rilke, A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a letter in 1923 to a dear friend and countess in deep grief. His words speak to me, echoing the words of great sages and gurus, that it is when we seek to choose what happens in life that we suffer. When we avoid or shun events or the opposite, attach, when we say, “this is good and this is bad, this not that”, then we are not in the flow of life, and we suffer the experience. In this, there can come a desire to push death away, to treat it as the enemy when it can be our best teacher and friend, our moment for deepening into life, opening into love, understanding who we truly are.
Here are Rilke’s words …
The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves.
I am not saying that we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life’s other half) in our love. This is what actually happens in the great expansiveness of love, which cannot be stopped or constricted. It is only because we exclude it that death becomes more and more foreign to us and, ultimately, our enemy.
It is conceivable that death is infinitely closer to us than life itself… What do we know of it?
… So long as we stand in opposition to Death we will disfigure it. Believe me, my dear Countess, Death is our friend, our closest friend, perhaps the only friend who can never be misled by our ploys and vacillations. And I do not mean that in the sentimental, romantic sense of distrusting or renouncing life. Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love… Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.
Spring Yoga Classes Starting Up Next Week, May 22, 2018.
I’m back on our island home and ready to open up the oceanside studio so we can gather together on the mats for our yoga practice.
Monday classes will start May 28, a week later than most, given holiday Monday. 5 weeks of classes
Tuesday class (meaning chair yoga!) starts up on May 22, just after the long weekend. Running for 6 weeks.
Wednesday class starts next week, May 23. 6 classes in the series.
All classes will run til the end of June.
Pre-registration and payment is requested to confirm your place. Monday classes $62.50; Tuesday Chair Yoga $60; Wednesday classes $75. If you can’t make a class in the series, let me know so we can adjust the fee.
Announcing another 8-week set of yoga classes. All weekly classes will recommence the week of February 5, and run until the last week of March. As before, reserving a space requires pre-registration and payment. See full details @ www.yogawithcate.ca, or email me, c.mcewen@shaw.ca
Fees: Weekly classes, other than chair yoga, are $100 for the session. Restorative classes are $20 each.
