Please visit my website!

Hello Friends,

I am no longer using this blog site regularly. Please visit my website www.yogakula.co.nz  for the latest on Anusara Yoga classes, workshops & events in New Zealand!

With thanks!
Katie

Summer Yoga Classes

Happy New Year Friends & Yogis!!

My Summer timetable for Anusara Yoga classes in Christchurch is now posted. Love to see you on the mat in 2010 as we practice presence, playfulness, and possibility!

Please check out my latest article below and share your thoughts!
And be sure to visit my website: www.yogakula.co.nz

Look forward to seeing you soon!

Warm wishes & love,
Katie

Moving from Momentum to Moment

One aspect of New Zealand culture that I really treasure is the importance we place on taking time out of our work, our routines, and our usual obligations every year. In this country, it's not just about the days right before and after the offical holidays. Most often our break is a full three to six weeks of pure enjoyment of family, friends, and leisure! In the holiday gatherings, we reconnect and reaffirm our closest relationships. In travels near or far, we get out into the beauty of the natural landscapes. In this time "away", we give ourselves permission to rest and replenish- body, mind, and spirit. No matter where we've been or what we've done, we arrive back where we left off feeling re-nourished, rejuvenated, and re-inspired.

This is the great gift of perspective!

I recently heard certified Anusara teacher Noah Maze (who is coming to teach in NZ this year!) say, "Time creates our experience but our experience also creates time. So, in order to change Time, we can change our experience."

Read that sentence again and think about it... I have!
I am a Capricorn by chance, american by birth, and a goal oriented, perfectionist by virtue of my upbringing and my culture. Because of this, my tendency is to live more in the world of that first sentence - Time creates my experience. And, often my day to day experience becomes - There is never enough Time!! Sound familiar?

Rather than inhabiting each moment, we get caught in momentum.
When this happens, life moves fast and we often feel out of control and dis empowered. The very nature of this life is movement, flux, pulsation. We feel this in the most basic and vital principle of existence- the flow of breath. What I have learned through my yoga practice is while I can't change time marching on, what I CAN change is how I experience that movement, moment to moment.

As we shift from focus on momentum to focus on moment, Time slows down and our experience expands exponentially.

Holidays are good for this! We give ourselves permission to fully immerse in the moment - a good book, the catching of a fish, an overdue conversation with an old friend, a long decadent brunch, the sound of the sea, the grass under foot...We practice another way of BEING.

When we are fully present in our experience, we cease to identify with the movement of life and instead tap into a steadiness of presence that sees, hears, tastes, smells, feels, simply IS in each moment as it arises. Time changes because our experience of time, moment to moment, shifts. The challenge becomes maintaining this practice of moment to moment awareness (and delight!) when we return back to work, school, and the world of obligations. How can we keep making our "ordinary" life feels fresh again?

Yoga gives us an opportunity to practice presence.

On the mat, we use the full engagement of our body in union with our breath to yoke the awareness of the our mind to our immediate, visceral experience. As it arises. Whether we are holding steady in Warrior, kicking up to our first handstand, or sinking deeply into meditation or relaxation, the practice is the same.

It involves the willingness to open ourselves fully. To drop our barriers, our boundaries, our judgements, our expectations, our backward or forward projections and open to the sensations, thoughts, and feelings that are being offered right NOW. In doing so, we return our attention again and again to what is steady, perceiving and absorbing our experience in the world. When we come to know this place of presence amidst beauty, bliss, boredom OR hardship, we have access to move amidst the flow of our lives with a renewed, weighty sense of BE-ingness.

Like all things, it gets easier with practice and with support of kula - community!

Pre Holiday Yoga Classes: Nov 30-Dec 22

With the anticipation, preparations, and general busyness of life at home & at work, it is more important than ever to carve out time in our life schedules for practices that help us remain nourished, inspired, expanded, and joyful...

Give yourself the gift of TIME this pre-holiday season.
Join me for yoga over these next few weeks!

Nourish your body, feed your heart, stay connected to a community of inspiration and support!

To support your practice and with thanks for all YOU have given me on and off the yoga mat,

I am pleased to offer you

FLEXIBLE HOLIDAY SCHEDULE!
SPECIAL HOLIDAY RATES!

Please go to www.yogakula.co.nz for more details and see the Pre-Holiday Timetable here!

In the spirit of gratitude,

Katie

NEW Spring Classes Start Sept 28th!!

SPRING YOGA SESSION

September 28th-November 26th
(No classes Labour Weekend Monday)


Spaces are limited. Please contact me via email or phone to reserve your place in class.

Be the Artist of Your EVERY DAY

Spring is a season that awakens our spirits! The sunshine hours lengthen, the natural world blossoms and our bodies, minds, and hearts stir again. Can you feel it?

It is a tantalizing time of year! There is the sense of being at the very edge of something. Something so exciting, so beautiful that every moment literally vibrates with anticipation, with urgency. What is this feeling?

We feel compelled...

Perhaps we will long to paint a masterpiece, write a novel or poem, build a path for our garden, take up sculpture, learn an instrument, or in some other unique expression ...craft a way to language our life. What is at the heart of all of these deep dreams and longings? I believe it's the desire, power, and ability to CREATE.

I have never been an "artist" in the strict definition of the word. And for a long time, the very notion of being a "Creator" seemed foreign and unobtainable to me. Perhaps you have felt the same way?

One of the simple and profound truths that the practice of yoga has taught me is, that at our very essence and within our ordinary mundane world, we ARE all artists. In every moment and with every breath, we have the opportunity to craft our own experience of this life from what is being offered.

Our creative act is CHOICE.

We cannot always choose what will happen in our lives. Sometimes we miss the bus, sometimes our hearts get broken. One day we get promoted, the next year we must look for work. We cannot control the circumstances of our life but what we can do is choose how we will experience them, moment to moment.

Every yoga pose, every yoga class offers us "circumstances". There is a fixed form of the pose, a certain sequence to the class, particular freedoms and limitations of our body on that day, and (always) the fluctuating state of our mind and heart. Over all of these things, we may feel that we have little direct control.

On our yoga mat, we practice engaging our experience as it arises, moment to moment. Take a breath, soften our skin. Open up to exactly what the moment is offering right now. From that place, we get to choose...

How can I best align with the flow of nature? How can I use this vehicle of the body and this gift of the breath to make more beauty in my own world and in my community? With what quality of heart will I choose to face both my joys and challenges? I can aggressively blast past my edge, fearfully shy away from exploring it, OR I can approach my scary places with curiosity, tenderness and steadfastness. I'm the one that gets to choose! What an awesome freedom...

As we practice navigating our choices skillfully, each of us learns how to best become the ARTIST of our every day. We never know how much sharing our experiences, our expressions, our ARTISTRY will inspire and uplift those around us...

"When one flower blooms, Spring awakens everywhere"

John O'Donohue

I don't know exactly what a prayer is...
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver