Yoga is a holistic practice that benefits every body and every mind. It is a great solution to stress, anxiety, and depression. We offer many different styles – we all face each day as a slightly different person with different bodily needs.
If you need recovery from pushing your body to the extreme:
Try our Soft and Slow, Integrated Yoga, or Restorative Flow classes for a more restful and soothing experience where you can just take a vacation from all the demands of life. These classes offer a longer time period in each posture and slower paced movements between them. These will be more focused on gentle stretching rather than strengthening.
If you are looking to get your sweat on, improve your level of strength and learn or refine more advanced postures:
Try our Vinyasa or Power Vinyasa classes. These classes are fun and upbeat and might kick your ass a bit! Steph and Bonnie play some great music, Brian and Rebecka offer a more meditative style without music.
If you want to test out a classic, traditional style yoga:
Try our Ashtanga classes. The best ones to start with as a beginner are Ashtanga Foundations which is a balanced class for all levels, or the Mysore Ashtanga classes which are very individualized. The full Primary Series class is for those who have conditioned themselves and learned about the sequence through the Foundations and Mysore classes. Give yourself at least a month or two of these before trying the Primary Series.
To alleviate any confusion about our Mysore classes, they are offered daily with the exception of new and full moon days to give us all a little rest. Our moon day calendar can be found here on our yoga page. If you ever show up for Mysore and there is no teacher there, it’s a moon day! Also, this class has a 2-hour time slot. Beginners should show up at the start time of class so the teacher can show you how to do the Ashtanga sun salutations and fundamental asanas. Beginners should expect their session to last about an hour. Then as you get more experience over time, you will work on memorizing the whole Primary Series sequence, eventually possibly adding some or all of intermediate series as well. When you have a short sequence memorized, you can drop in any time during the 2-hour time slot. This class has a unique format in that there will be a large group of people practicing ashtanga but at their own pace. This is the style taught in Mysore, India, thus the name of the class. There will be all levels of practitioners from complete beginners to those that may look like they could instantly be employed with Cirque du Soleil!
If you can squeeze a yoga practice in at least a few times a week, you will notice that you suddenly get better at climbing, weight lifting, or other types of sports. It will elevate whatever else you are doing with your body. See you in the Shala!
