Live Online yoga Classes Continue

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.”

— Helen Keller

 

Greetings Yogis,

            Here we are a few months into the Corona virus pandemic, with some time spent in lockdown and getting used to a new way of life. Whether we like it or not, we are going through changes that affect us each individually as well as societally. What this means for our future, we cannot yet say. However,  if distancing truly makes our hearts grow fonder, let’s hope for a kinder, gentler and more just world when we finally come out of this. In the meantime, online yoga is here for a little while longer. Both Juli and Pinelopi continue their regular schedule online through June. With Pinelopi dropping to one class a week through July for summer holidays. Near the end of July we hope to know more about the regulations and peak statuses of Berlin to make a decision whether we return to the studio in August.

 

Hatha Yoga Classes Live Online

Pinelopi’s regular Hatha Yoga classes continue online through June, and will reduce to once a week in July for summer holidays. Here is how to join.

 

yoga online

yoga online

Sunday Yoga Live Online

Juli‘s regular Sunday Yoga classes from 4-5:30pm continue live online through June and July. Here’s how to join.

We continue to be thankful for your practice and your support of our work. Stay healthy, stay safe, protect those at risk by keeping a distance.

 

At English Yoga Berlin, we offer Hatha Yoga classes with Pinelopi and Vinyasa yoga with Juli. Our yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcome to beginners, as well as people struggling with chronic pain. We also offer Berlin business yoga, and private yoga classes, as well as queer and trans prioritized community classes. We are currently offering all of our yoga classes live online. See our schedule for more info.

SPRING/SUMMER NEWS FROM ENGLISH YOGA BERLIN

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“Time
doesn’t heal,
consciousness does”

                                                                      ― Danielle LaPorte

Greetings Yogis!

The spring weather is all over the place, but we are not. We have grounded ourselves in preparation for a bright season to remember.  News from English Yoga Berlin bring you: Clelia joins the team, courtesy of Erasmus, to learn from EYB about survival in the world of small sustainable enterprises. Pinelopi is getting stronger and stronger after her accident.  There are still places left in the 3 hour Yoga and Alexander Technique’s workshop with Rossella Buono and David Moore – read all about it!!

News from English Yoga Berlin

Pinelopi is back

Pinelopi’s Back

Pinelopi is back after her bike accident in December.  Lots of thanks to the wonderful substitute teachers that have kept the yoga Kreuzberg classes going for her.  She is now feeling stronger and enjoying giving the Hatha Yoga classes again. Thank you to all the wonderful people who sent flowers, healing wishes and kindness!   This time apart doing physical rehabilitation and healing has allowed her to focus on how to better the injury conscious aspect of yoga.

 

DM FB event

Yoga and the Alexander Technique Workshops

Our 6-day workshop with David Moore and Rossella Buono has one place left. Write to us if you are interested! Because of the popularity of the workshop, we’re now also offering a 3-hour workshop on July 18th, 6pm to 9pm. Register here.

 

Erasmus – Clelia

Erasmus meets English Yoga BerlinHello, pleased to meet you!! My name is Clelia and I am here to learn from EYB what it takes to run a yoga enterprise committed to people and their needs – I hope to meet as many of you as possible.  Read more in the blog about how I got here, it’s a story about how to live through limitations and transform pain into a great opportunity.

 

 

 Yogatherapy

Juli continues with her yoga therapy courseJuli is excited to continue with the advanced yoga teacher training, Svastha Yoga Therapy at the begining of June. Module 5 will bring new knowledge about yoga for depression and anxiety to the community classes at English Yoga Berlin: therapeutic Vinyasa Flow on Sundays at 4pm.

 

 

New EU regulations on private data collection

EYB is GDPR compliant

Sign up for our newsletter

No doubt you know by now what GDPR is.  We have been reviewing all our administrative processes and our privacy policy as regards to the use and retention of the private data of our students.  As you know we only send out our newsletter for a maximum of four times per year, so if it would bring you joy to receive our heartfelt seasonal updates, click here and then scroll down to the bottom of the page. You can subscribe to our mailing list on the right.

 

Holiday Closures

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Holiday time

Everyone needs a holiday, even yoga teachers! Hatha Yoga classes will be closed from July 1 – 23.

Vinyasa Yoga classes closure will be from July 20th to mid-August, check the website for up to date schedule information.

 

 
We offer Hatha Yoga classes with Pinelopi and Vinyasa yoga with Juli.  Our yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. We also offer Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes, including for people struggling with chronic pain.

Is there such a thing as Accessible Yoga?

What is NOT accessible yoga?

accessible yoga

Do we all have to look the same?

You know the story. You’ve hurt your back and a friend says “you should do yoga!” And then you go with your friend to their favourite weekly yoga flow class. You put down 20€ and hope for the best. It’s fast, sweaty, the music’s hip, everyone’s dressed in the latest yoga fashion trend and almost everyone looks like a ‘yoga journal’ or ‘sein’ cover model. You find yourself struggling to keep up. You try your best, but somehow your body just won’t let you contort itself into those poses. The next day, your back hurts more than it did before, along with your wrists. And you swear you’re never trying yoga again.

Okay, it’s perhaps an exaggerated stereotype of what an accessible yoga class is NOT. But it does represent a rather broad view of what contemporary westernized capitalized yoga is all about. One of the problems is that most western people (both lovers and haters of yoga) believe that yoga is only that which is written above. I am not the first to say #notallyoga. But like all #notall hashtags, it tries to absolve the writer of responsibility that we should all be taking. Yoga is a 5000 year old practice stemming from South Asia. By believing that yoga is only that one thing that has been exploited by sporty opportunistic Californians erases its history and invisibilizes the decolonial work done by contemporary yogis such as nisha ahuja and Be Scofield. As yoga practitioners in a western world, we should all be working towards decolonizing our practice, promoting the diversity of yoga styles (eg; restorative) and practices (yoga nidra, pranayama, bhakti, etc.), and making yoga more accessible to everyone. Cultural appropriation does not make yoga classes at all comfortable or accessible to people who experience racism. Nor do expensive fees to lower-income folks, body-image and ‘healthy-living’ marketing campaigns to people who look different than what the mainstream expects healthy yogis to look like, nor to those with dis/abilities (physical or mental). Yes, I say “we,” but it means “I” and perhaps you too. What can I do as a non-South Asian yoga practitioner who teaches classes?

What IS accessible yoga?

I don’t have all the answers to this. But I have some ideas and would be happy to hear from you about what you feel that means. At English Yoga Berlin, we strive to offer accessible yoga classes. But we recognize that there are many things we cannot offer as well, and our studio is not accessible to just ‘everyone.’ Our Kreuzberg yoga studio is up one flight of stairs – this does not allow those who cannot take the stairs to even attend our classes. We also do not provide sign-language interpretation or any other language that we ourselves do not know (Greek, Spanish, German and English). We run our small back house yoga studio in a city with people from all over the world, with many different languages, and with a lower-income average than most bigger European cities. Our regular rates are significantly lower than bigger studios in Berlin, and we offer our classes in simple English, making it more economically and linguistically-accessible to newcomers. Pinelopi‘s injury conscious and gentle Hatha Yoga classes are especially suitable for participants who suffer from chronic pain. Juli‘s community yoga classes have at their focus the creation of an intentional space for people who feel marginalized or excluded in mainstream yoga classes, eg. queer and trans* folks, abundant bodied, bpoc. As well as an additional sliding-scale reduction for lower- / no-income folks who make Berlin their home (this reduction is not for tourists). Both of us include a 15-20 minute guided relaxation, based on yoga nidra techniques, at the end of all of our classes. Yoga Nidra is a proven method to help reduce stress, insomnia and anxiety. These are just some of the ways that I try to counter the dominant culture’s exploitation of yoga. But it’s a continual learning process and there are many more strategies that I continue to learn about and adopt through reading articles and discussing with others. There are other yoga practitioners who I’ve met in my Berlin community and in other places, who are also exploring various strategies. This movement is growing. I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on it, and appreciate links to articles and other yoga spaces! Thank you.

 

Wishing you a peaceful new year

Our heart’s wish for this year is a peaceful 2017 – both in the world out there and inside of us.

May we be able to contact our emotions, to feel the grief and powerlessness behind the anger, and to find the caring hiding behind the grief. May this contact enable us to act from a place of caring and love. May all feelings of unworthiness, of “not being enough” , of needing “to get somewhere” dissipate in feelings of love and presence. May we accept ourselves as we are in this very moment. May this acceptance give us strength to change. May this change inside help us act in a world that so desperately needs every conscious being out there.  May this change build bridges and break through walls. May this change break through the pain of racism, homophobia, sexism, fascism. May this change allow us to be free.

 

In a world of increasing violence and turmoil, we wish for peace, acceptance, change, kindness and love.

May all beings be free.

– with love, from English Yoga Berlin

 

English Yoga Berlin thanks you for all your commitment and support in these past years. We will continue to give Hatha Yoga and Vinyasa Flow Yoga classes regularly in 2017. Due to the Chakra course being full with several people on a waiting list, we will repeat this course in the spring of 2017.  We are happy to see that so many people are interested in learning about the chakras and their effect on our bodies and consciousness!