Yoga Alexander Technique workshop-3 hrs-July 2018

As our six-day Yoga Alexander Technique workshop is booked up, we are now offering a smaller version of the workshop for those of you who didn’t get to take part.

Berlin Yoga and the Alexander TechniqueWHEN:            Wednesday 18th July 6pm – 9pm

WHERE:          English Yoga Berlin, Görlitzer Str 39, Kreuzberg

FOR WHO:      For any one with an interest in yoga or the Alexander technique.

TAUGHT BY:  Rossella Buono and David Moore from the School of F.M. Alexander Studies

PRICE:              €30

The Yoga Alexander Technique workshop consists of one afternoon in which we will develop an individualized practice and an understanding of the uniqueness of the use of yourself in movement and at rest.

The workshop will offer an active and practical investigation of:

· Coordination and posture from an Alexander Technique perspective
· Modifying yoga poses
· Kinaesthesia
· Doing and non-doing
· Directing energy through the body
· Identifying and overcoming habits

– All abilities and levels of experience.

– Absolute beginners are welcome!

– Please wear comfortable clothes.

Booking is strongly recommended to insure a place. To book your place click here or contact:

Rossella: rossella (at) rossellabuono  (dot) com

David: info (at) alexanderschool (dot) edu (dot) au

Pinelopi: pinelopi (at) englishyogaberlin (dot) com

David Moore will also be offering private lessons in Berlin on Wednesday 24th July, if you are interested contact us.

ABOUT THE TEACHERS:

Rossella Buono relocated to Canterbury, UK in January 2013 from Melbourne where she had an established Alexander Technique practice. Working with a great range of people, Rossella has applied the Technique to improving the lives of people with issues such as back, neck or shoulder pain, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, sciatica, asthma, stuttering, anxiety and stress. She has also enjoyed attaining tangible posture and movement improvements for musicians, sportspeople, office workers, and the elderly. In her capacity as a care worker, she has developed strategies to improve the quality of life for people with physical and mental disabilities. She is the co-author of “For the Love of Games”, that offers a collection of more than 100 Alexander Technique games and activities to use when working with groups and individuals.

Rossella was first introduced to the Technique as a means of her own rehabilitation, after breaking her leg in an accident – and found herself benefitting greatly from the approach. After eliminating residual pain and regaining sustainable, coordinated mechanical function, Rossella decided to train as an Alexander Technique teacher. Since then she has worked to offer others the same opportunity for the elimination of pain and improvement of overall quality of life.

 

David Moore teaching Yoga and the Alexander Technique in Berlin

Photo credit: Rossella Buono

David Moore, Director at the School for F.M. Alexander Studies graduated from Australia’s first Alexander technique training course in Sydney in 1985. After graduating he spent some weeks each year for several years studying with senior American teacher, the late Marjorie Barstow.  Since then he has established private practices in New Zealand and Melbourne, run many  residential courses in Australia, Italy and New Zealand, and taught classes and intensive workshops in the UK, Germany, Japan Italy, Taiwan, and the USA. In 1999 he set up an Alexander Technique Teacher Training course which is approved by the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique. This 1600 hour training course runs over three years.

Prior to studying the Alexander technique David did many years of yoga practice. He spent over seven years in India and Thailand, including over two years in Thai meditation monasteries, and two years in Madras studying with TKV Desikachar at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandaram. In Sydney he studied Iyengar yoga for four years with Martin Jackson from 1991 – 1994, including undertaking a teacher training course with Martin in 1994. He now teaches classes applying the Alexander technique to yoga and is the author of “Smart Yoga: Apply the Alexander Technique to Enhance Your Practice, Prevent Injury, and Increase Body Awareness”. He also has a strong interest in voice and performance, and has run numerous classes and workshops for singers, storytellers and public speakers.

English Yoga Berlin is the host of this event.  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 for people struggling with chronic pain.

Yoga Kreuzberg here I come!

Yoga Kreuzberg here I am!
Yoga Kreuzberg here I am!

Hello Yoga Kreuzberg, 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.  But let me tell you a little about how I got here, it’s a story about how to live through limitations and transform pain into a great opportunity.

My path to English Yoga Berlin begun one day about one year ago: I had an office job, a radio show in the student radio at Glasgow university and an arthritic hip.  This meant I was spending most of my time sitting down inputting data or listening to music; anyone of you who has experience directly or indirectly in arthritic pain will know that lack of movement is going to make things chronically worse.  My only lifeline was my daily yoga practice, as yoga is the only movement based activity with no impact and enough awareness to care for my condition.  I had tried the gym, but it only left me in pain at night: I also used to swim, but not being able to move the leg meant that I was only using my upper body.  Yoga was able to tackle posture, injury-conscious movement and offered breathing techniques that relaxed all the tense muscles doing their best to cope but becoming chronically tight.

I could not afford to pay for the amount of classes I needed every week (at least five), so I practiced at home.  I confess that practicing yoga on my own felt lonely at times, and the available online yoga classes would not help me learn how to address my individual needs; as my hip became tighter and tighter, it was harder and harder to motivate myself on the mat.  Nevermind full splits, I could not even sit crossed legged!  I craved a teacher, a guide, another human to help me, and maybe other faces with me in the room to let me know I was not alone in caring for our bodies and minds.  I decided I needed to take action in far deeper ways that what I had been doing, I needed a true commitment to my health: my job came to an end, I had to find another way to make a living.  I thought “can I put these two things together? make a living and commit to my health in a supportive community?”.

The answers came: where I live in Scotland, there is a commitment from local government to invest funding for both entrepreneurs and initiatives to help tackle physical and mental health.  I looked into setting up a social enterprise, and the answers kept coming: I found out from a dear friend about Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs, a programme to support new entrepreneurs to go abroad and learn in a paid internship from more experienced entrepreneurs.  I searched and spoke to many yoga teachers, studios and organisation across Europe, until I found Kreuzberg Yoga with Pinelopi and Juli: they offer a yoga practice that nurtures and potentially empowers individuals as interconnected to each other through mutual respect, and that is proactive in making the benefits of yoga available to those traditionally marginalised from it – whether it is for physical ability, economic background, transgressive identity, ideals of body shape, perceptions of yoga as exclusively spiritual, esoteric, for experts.  It was, and is, the loudest answer to my needs I could ever hope for.

Clelia is an Erasmus entrepreneur working as an intern in learning how to set up a small yoga business such as English Yoga Berlin. 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 for people struggling with chronic pain.

 

Spiritual Sunglasses

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

There is no doubt to me that 2016 was a bad year for the world. The Syrian war, Brexit, Trump, 34000 people forced daily from their homes as a result of conflict or persecution, thousands of children at risk of starvation in Nigeria are only SOME of the things last year had in store for us.

It is hard to really feel the pain of this world. So we don’t. We turn away. We try to focus on our smaller scaled- seemingly more controllable lives. And understandably so… who could allow themselves to feel it? What if our heart simply breaks? We do our yoga. We visualize light around us and in us. And, often as a result, we distance ourselves more and more from the reality of this world.

But was that the point of yoga?

Does forming a spiritual understanding of the world -one where Light and souls exist- mean distancing ourselves from suffering?

When I asked my teacher this during my training, he said that we must learn to wear spiritual sunglasses. I liked the metaphor in that. He said that we have to be able to see a spiritual world where souls walk this Earth and Light is in everything AND to be able to put the sunglasses on and see the world that is in front of us, to feel the suffering and the reality that comes through. One would be a deeper reality and another would be a manifestation of reality. Both equally important to be able to see and feel as a yoga practitioner.  We are to practice putting the glasses on and off.

Tara Brach talks about the Tonglen meditation from the Tibetan Tradition. This meditation is about listening to the cries of the world and responding to it. As you breathe in, you feel the pain of this world, as you breathe out you respond with love and care for it.

Now many would rightfully wonder what good would breathing in and out do to the suffering of the world? When seen as just a breathing in and out, I would say that this will do no good at all. But, as mentioned above, feeling the world’s suffering can be so overwhelming for most of us, that we shelter ourselves from it and become more self-centered and apathetic. So being able to feel and connect with both the suffering of other people and the love you have for this world, I believe can do a lot. We first must be able to connect with our reality, feel the pain and love in our hearts before we can respond by taking action.

We must know how to put these spiritual sunglasses on and off many times a day, keeping both realities close to heart, caring for both our human condition as our spiritual one.

 

 Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga Berlin Kreuzberg classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She is a sivananda yoga teacher that also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. All her yoga classes end in deep relaxation using yoga Nidra techniques.  In her Berlin Chakra course, she uses the chakras as a base line to self-explore concepts such as forgiveness, group thought, letting go, and becoming self-aware of limiting beliefs.

A workshop on yoga and the Alexander Technique!

We are happy to host a workshop at our studio on Yoga and the Alexander Technique! As injury conscious yoga teachers, we find this workshop particularly interesting to deepen our knowledge on how yoga movements can cause injury in different people. This is yet another step to deepen our commitment to providing safe yoga to our students.  You are all warmly invited to participate!

The details:

  • What is the Alexander Technique?

This is a technique that studies movement and helps eliminate unnecessary tension in order to move in a more effective way. By using this technique you can identify your unconscious patterns of tension and change these patterns to be more at ease in your body.

  • Who will run the Workshop?

The workshop will be run by David Moore, author of the books “Yoga and the Alexander Technique: Intelligent Injury-Free Yoga” and an upcoming book “Smart Yoga: Apply the Alexander Technique to Enhance Your Practice, Prevent Injury, and Increase Body Awareness” which is being published in June (here are the reviews).  David is the director of the School for F.M Alexander Studies in Melbourne which has been running a three year full time training course for Alexander teachers since 1998. He has been developing and teaching the application of the Alexander Technique to yoga practice for over 30 years and runs workshops and retreats in Australia and internationally.

  • Who is it for?

This workshop is for every yoga or Alexander technique practitioner who wishes to deepen their knowledge in how to prevent and deal with injury. It will be of particular interest to yoga teachers, Alexander Technique teachers and experienced practitioners in those disciplines.

  • What is the workshop about?

The workshop will provide an active and practical investigation of

  • ·         Coordination and posture from an Alexander Technique perspective
  • ·         Modifying yoga poses
  • ·         Kinaesthesia
  • ·         Doing and non-doing
  • ·         Directing energy through the body
  • ·         Identifying and overcoming habits
  • ·         Developing an individualized practice

  • When?

July 2nd 2017 9am to 3pm

  • Where?

English Yoga Berlin, Görlitzer Str 39, Kreuzberg

The workshop is held in the Gemeinschaftsraum (the exKinder Kino, or KiKi). Press the button for ´YOGA´ at the front door, then follow the signs through to the last courtyard, up the stairs and find us on the first floor, by the painted trees.

  • How much?

50 Euro

  • Book the workshop:

Click here to book the workshop through paypal.

 

At English Yoga Berlin we offer regular weekly Hatha and Vinyasa Yoga classes. We are committed to using injury conscious approaches as we understand that each body is unique.  Our yoga Kreuzberg classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. We also offer Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. 

 

What is your definition of healing?

Photo by Gabriel Barletta

Photo by Gabriel Barletta

“Many of us define healed as the opposite of needy. Therefore to be healed means to be fully self contained, always positive, always happy, always sure of oneself, and never needing anyone. No wonder few ever consider themselves “healed”.”

  • Caroline Myss

 

In today’s western world where trauma and wounds have taken a significant place in our society, we hear a lot of the word “healing”. This is a common word used in a very wide spectrum from yoga classes to psychology to random talks between friends. Healing has taken an important place in our lives, both as a concept and as a reality we strive to achieve.

So what is emotional healing?

I think this is an important question to ask. Is healing about no longer being affected by an event of the past? Is it about the event no longer holding power over you? Is healing about being well and not ever needing anything again? When can someone consider themselves healed? Or is it an ever going process that we can never attain?

I believe that for all of us using this word, it is important to take some time and give our own personal definition to it. And once we have defined it, to look at it again and decide if this is an attainable goal or a never ending process that we are setting too high standards for.

I personally define healing as letting go of the power that a wound holds over me. I don’t need to always be happy, I can be needy, I still have the scars of the wound… but the wound no longer defines me or directs my actions in my life.

 Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga Berlin Kreuzberg classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She is a sivananda yoga teacher that also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. All her yoga classes end in deep relaxation using yoga Nidra techniques.  In her Berlin Chakra course, she uses the chakras as a base line to self-explore concepts such as forgiveness, group thought, letting go, and becoming self-aware of limiting beliefs.

Happy Spring from English Yoga Berlin!

Dear Yogis and Friends!

Every year I get very excited when the sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night become of equal length.

Photo by Melissa Askew

Photo by Melissa Askew

The spring equinox marks the beginning of a new season, and living in Berlin, that symbolically marks the end of a long winter and the beginning of light shining through again!  It might still take some time but it is happening!

It’s time for that  (internal and external) spring cleaning  and I, for one, could not be more excited about it!

I find that every winter, a symbolic hibernation takes place in us that wisely slows us down, makes us go inwards, meditate, ponder, self-explore. It asks of us to explore our inner strength when the light is dim and the air is heavy. And in doing so we start planting new seeds into our subconscious, new wishes for our lives, new directions to follow.

And now? Now it’s time to open the windows, to clean up the cobwebs, and get rid of all the extra things that have accumulated and are not needed. It’s time to let fresh air into our hearts and minds. It’s time to enjoy the butterflies, the singing of the birds, smile at strangers, and let the sun touch our skin.  It’s time to bloom!

HAPPY SPRING EVERYBODY!!!

 

 Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga Berlin Kreuzberg classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She is a sivananda yoga teacher that also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. All her yoga classes end in deep relaxation using yoga Nidra techniques.  In her Berlin Chakra course, she uses the chakras as a base line to self-explore concepts such as forgiveness, group thought, letting go, and becoming self-aware of limiting beliefs.

Decodifying Forgiveness

Photo by David Schap

Photo by David Schap

What is forgiveness? One can apologize, say sorry, ask forgiveness. But what do these words actually mean? Are they all the same? And does this distinction even matter?

When I get lost with the meanings of words, I often go back to their etymology. I like to see what the original meaning of the word was, when the need for that word to be created arose. I also find it very telling to see how far we’ve strayed from that meaning.

When I looked up the word to forgive on the online etymological dictionary I was particularly impressed at the word meaning “to give up”. To give up what exactly? In old English it meant “to give up desire or power to punish”. Sorry, on the other hand, comes from the word sorrow. So when I say, I’m sorry to someone what I am actually saying is “I can feel your sorrow.” Apology comes from Greek, meaning “to use speech in defense”.

Interestingly, in Greek there are two more words used interchangeably for the word forgive. One is signomi (sin+ gnomi), which means I am now of the same opinion as you”. The other one is me-sighoreis which could be translated as “Can you make space for me to also be?”

I find the meaning of these words to be quite different to one another, and yet we use them all interchangeably and indiscriminately. No wonder we are all confused about what it means to forgive! Is it to give up the will to punish, to feel one’s sorrow without changing our actions, to hear someone defend themselves through speech, to tell the other person they were right all along, or to give the other person permission to also be as he/she is?

Before we even consider forgiving anything, we must at least know what we mean by it. Which is the forgiving that so many people say will liberate the heart and let it find peace?

Tara Brach tells this beautiful story in order to explain the process of forgiveness that resonates deeply with me:

“Imagine you are in the woods and you see a dog under a tree. You smile and go to pet this dog and it lurches at you, fangs bared and growling. You become angry at the dog and then you see its leg is caught in a trap. You shift again and go from being angry at the dog to having compassion for it.”

The shift from anger to compassion is when the forgiveness happens. I guess in a way you are doing all of the above: you give up the will to punish the dog (forgive) because you feel his sorrow (sorry). You can explain through speech what just occurred (apology), you are now of the same opinion – you would be angry too if you were trapped – (signomi) and you make space for the dog to also exist in his pain (me sighoreis).

Forgiveness occurs when anger turns to compassion.

Does this mean that because you forgave the dog, you should now go pet him and get bit? No way! It means that if you choose to help the dog, you need to approach him in a way that has clear boundaries that won’t damage you. And if that is not possible because the dog is so deep in his own pain and too dangerous for you to deal with, then you need to leave – and let someone with more experience help the dog out of his trap.

 Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga Kreuzberg classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She  also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. All her yoga classes end in deep relaxation using yoga Nidra techniques.  In her Berlin Chakra course, she uses the chakras as a base line to self-explore concepts such as forgiveness, group thought, letting go, and becoming self-aware of limiting beliefs.

Monday Morning- half price trial out classes

photo by Fern

photo by Fern

The autumn has arrived. The sun has said its goodbyes. The leaves are carrying the memory of light. Acorns and chestnuts fall. People slow down their outdoor extroverted active lives. You are being called to move indoors, to self reflect, to gently yoga by the candle flame with a friend.

 

 

Join Pinelopi’s special promotion for Monday morning Hatha Yoga:

Photo by Fern

Photo by Fern

What:    Hatha Yoga

Where:  Kiki, Gorlitzerstr. 39

When:   Monday mornings, 10.00-11.30

Special offer:  5 Euro try-out class

Offer ends:     30th of November, 2016

 

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Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She  also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. In January she will offer a ten week course on understanding Chakras through your yoga practice in Berlin.

I am here for you.

“I am here for you”, I say.

I say this a lot. To my daughter. To my partner. I say it to my friends. I say it to my yoga students. “I am here for you”.  But where is here?

Brene Brown has made a beautiful video clip partly describing depression as a deep dark hole that someone finds themselves in. Empathy, she says, is the ability of a friend to climb down that hole and sit with you for a while. The graphics are beautiful. The explanation between empathy and sympathy is eye opening. And I’ve been keeping that in mind every time I say “I’m here for you” to someone.   I visualize myself climbing down that ladder and sitting by the person’s side, holding their hand, feeling their sorrow with them… for a while. But the more I go down there, the harder I find it is to get out.

After a while, I realized, that Brene’s image of climbing down that dark hole, not only does not work for me, but it carries some dangers for a person with extreme sensitivity and empathy, as is that of my character. Brene says that empathy is about fueling connection. I 100% agree. I agree that empathy requires to be able to see the world as others see it, be nonjudgmental, understand another person’s feelings, and communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings. But could I possibly use another image that will help me not get overwhelmed and fuzz my emotional boundaries?

“I am here for you” means something different to me now. It means I see you. I see how hard and lonely you feel down there in that dark hole. I feel how difficult it is for you. I will come. I will sit at the edge of the hole, in the Light, by the ladder. And I will tell you “I am here for you”. Here – is at the edge of that hole. Here – is in the Light. Here – is close to the ladder. I won’t force you to climb up the ladder, I won’t try to convince you to come out of it. I will listen. I will tell you that I’m so glad you told me. I will feel your pain with you. But I will do that What do we mean when we say "I am here for you"?from a place of Light. I will wait for as long as you need, to find your way out. If you ask me, I will tell you where I think the ladder is. If you want me, I will stay silent while you cry and send you all my love. But, I am here -in the Light- for you. And hopefully, when you look up through your tear stained eyes and try to see me… hopefully, a part of you will be reminded that there is not only darkness out there. I will stay here for you. I will not leave your side., accompany you on your journey, won’t push you from your path and from your rhythm. I will stay in the Light by your side.

Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She  also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain. In January she will offer a ten week course on understanding Chakras through your yoga practice in Berlin.

Hatha Yoga with Pinelopi is back!

Pinelopi is now back from summer holiday, full of new energy and happy feelings, ready to teach yoga again!

 

Pinelopi’s classes are a mix of Hatha asanas (yoga poses), grounding techniques, pranayama (breathing exercises), pratyahara (practice of detachment), yoga nidra and meditation. She is an injury conscious yoga teacher and is a firm believer that yoga is for everybody and any body. She believes that no one should ever be in pain during class. All yoga poses can be adjusted so that one is still stretching, growing, strengthening, challenged, without experiencing pain or triggering old injuries.

Yoga, for her, requires becoming conscious of where you are at physically, emotionally, spiritually and what means you have available at this moment. Once the practitioner identifies this, yoga will work from there to release blocks and open up one’s spirit to new ways of seeing the world and receiving its’ gifts.

Join her at one of her regular Hatha Yoga weekly classes starting September 1st, 2016:

Monday

Tuesday

Thursday

9:45-11:15
Hatha Yoga

18:00-19:30
Hatha Yoga

18:00-19:30
Hatha Yoga

20:00-21:30
Hatha Yoga

Pinelopi specializes in Hatha Yoga. Her yoga classes are open for and welcoming to beginners. She  also offers Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes for people struggling with chronic pain.