Lotus Lily Yoga

 

Special Monday Night Class 7.45 - 8.30pm

This 45 minute class is made up of 3  15 minute components:

  • Pranayama (breathing practices both seated and standing)
  • Meditation (seated on floor and/or with wall support)
  • Relaxation (lying)

This class is  gentle and quiet with an emphasis on stillness and deep relaxing of both mind and body. The breathwork is dynamic and aims to increase prana (lifeforce) and move and rebalance qi/prana.

I am designing this class to appeal to those persons who

a)  feel they cannot physically achieve hatha yoga
b)  have particular anxiety or tension issues, and
c)  those hatha yoga students who would like to extend their practice to experience more of these 3 powerful modalities.
 
Blankets, mats, cushions supplied.

Yoga for Pregnancy & Birth Thursday mornings

Anne-Maree's prenatal yoga programme is a blend of active and quiet yogapractice suitable for either mothers-to-be wishing to continue yoga into their pregnancy, or those new to yoga as a way of birth preparation. This class is designed to compliment childbirth training through a greater connectionwith your body at this unique time-  mind/body/spirit. 

Breathing and relaxation techniques created and explored more fully for the prenatal yoga student reduce anxiety and calm both mother and baby. Selected asanas help stretch and align thepregnant woman, increase strength and resilience, allow more space for her baby,
plus improve posture which alleviates any pain or strain. 

Giving birth is a huge physical and emotional challenge - yoga is a superb training tool for this wondrous event and also for the new role of parent andthe road ahead.  Prenatal yoga aims to increase that connection with the body's innatewisdom and power in a gentle and natural way, bringing your whole being into balance.

Ladies Yoga Monday Evenings and Thursday Mornings

Pregnancy yogaAnne-Maree's prenatal yoga programme is a blend of active and quiet yogapractice suitable for either mothers-to-be wishing to continue yoga into their pregnancy, or those new to yoga as a way of birth preparation. This class is designed to compliment childbirth training through a greater connectionwith your body at this unique time-  mind/body/spirit. 

Breathing and relaxation techniques created and explored more fully for the prenatal yoga student reduce anxiety
and calm both mother and baby. Selected asanas help stretch and align thepregnant woman, increase strength and resilience, allow more space for her baby,
plus improve posture which alleviates any pain or strain. 
 
Giving birth is a huge physical and emotional challenge - yoga is a superb training tool for this wondrous event and also for the new role of parent andthe road ahead.  Prenatal yoga aims to increase that connection with the body's innatewisdom and power in a gentle and natural way, bringing your whole being into balance.

I would like to introduce myself, and my background and philosophy around the yoga I have practised and loved for many years. I have been 'into' Hatha yoga since my teens when, in particular, the Relaxation component of yoga  had a profound effect on me and my level of anxiety (which I had not been fully aware of, and yet I knew that I hardly ever felt 'at ease').

I was first trained at the Gita School of Yoga, Margrit Segesman being the first yoga teacher to set up in Melbourne in the early 50's.  It was explained to us that HATHA is the physical arm of yoga - the spiritual/esoteric and meditation studies I later went on to explore. HA - THA - has two syllables - HA - meaning 'sun' and THA - means 'moon' and the blending of these two polarities in yoga practice is what gives harmony and balance.

The word YOGA itself means to yoke or join.  My yoga classes became a special time that
I looked forward to each week - shutting out the noisy world,  climbing the old stairs to that sacred space, where I so enjoyed 'ironing' the kinks out of my body through stretching, squeezing and self-massage, going a little bit further with my asanas by giving in rather than pushing or going too hard, going within and listening and feeling into the wondrous process that is my breath, breathing and sustaining me through each minute of my day. Becoming conscious of all the above and increasing the benefits via oxygen and prana to every cell of my body. 

Here lies the chance to honour the physical processes that make up our amazing bodies and link this through our hearts and minds to our higher selves or spirit. Indeed hatha yoga is about awareness and linking body, mind and spirit consciously.

Through my passion for yoga and how it made me feel (taller! centred, calmer, tingly, warm, balanced, alert, happy, vibrant) I gravitated towards teaching and passing these jewels onto others!  There are many forms of wonderful rejuvenating exercise, but I feel yoga has it all in a nutshell - alignment to give steadiness and improve posture, asanas to increase flexibility and
strength and to balance hormones via the endocrine system. The stretching and releasing allows blood and lymph to circulate and flow delivering nutrients to tissues and organs and ridding our body of built up wastes efficiently. Yoga discipline includes stillness too, an antidote to the busy lifestyle we are all so apart of in these hectic times, and breathing techniques that cleanse, and calm us, while increasing our lifeforce/prana/energy. Meditation aims to still the mind, a clearing that rests our mental faculties, recharges our whole nervous system, and reduces blood pressure. 

Lastly Yoga relaxation is the icing on the cake!  A total letting go of all our muscles and 'armour' that we put on to each day to face the world. Tightness or stagnation in the physical body, not addressed is the precursor to much physical and mental maladies. Relaxation is real 'letting go' in and of the physical body, with benefits that reverberate into our emotional/mental and psychological states. The completion of a yoga class should find a person tranquil, grounded, aligned, peaceful yet energised and restored.  

These days I am also a Traditional Chinese Medical practitioner and I find the blending of these two ancient Eastern practices life-affirming.  The balance we seek in hatha yoga classes is also the balance my patients seek in their consultations with me.

Chinese Medicine intrinsically is to do with the interplay of Yin and Yang - male/female, dark/light, hot/cold, excess/deficiency - or Sun/Moon- adjusting what is out of sync, what causes disease, or 'un-ease'.  The qi we aim to tonify or disperse or take into our body with fresh food in Chinese medicine is the same as the prana/lifeforce we take in through the breath and being close to nature in yogic parlance.

At Camberwell Health & Healing I am offering yoga classes on Monday evening and Thursday mornings. General yoga classes consist of warm-ups, yoga breathing techniques, asana/posture work, meditation and relaxation (15min).